This is the sort of story that I really hate but feel obligated to discuss. I hate these stories because they usually portend the unnecessary death of a cancer patient, often a child with cancer whose parents refuse chemotherapy or who refuses chemotherapy and is unfortunate enough to have a parent who either has alternative medicine proclivities herself, lacks the guts to tell the child that he’s getting treated for his own good and he doesn’t have a choice in the matter, or, in a couple of cases that I’ve discussed, conflates using indigenous people’s medicine instead of chemotherapy as a way of asserting their cultural identity. In the vast majority of these cases, the child has a highly curable lymphoma or leukemia. Not infrequently, the child undergoes one or two rounds of chemotherapy, and the child and/or parent, alarmed at the side effects, decides that the child doesn’t need the rest of the chemotherapy course. This seems to be more likely to happen if the child has a great response to the first round or two of chemotherapy and goes into complete remission. Unfortunately, the chemotherapy regimens for childhood leukemias and lymphomas are long for a reason. Oncologists don’t give up to two and a half years of chemotherapy because they like poisoning children. Decades ago, they learned that if they didn’t give such prolonged courses of chemotherapy, the cancer was likely to return, even if it had gone into remission after only one or two courses of intensive chemotherapy. Unfortunately, that reality has led too many parents who, understandably, can’t stand seeing their children suffering chemotherapy effects to go along with prematurely stopping the chemotherapy.
The names of the children and adolescents with cancer I’ve discussed resonate over the years who have refused chemotherapy still resonate with me even though it’s been a while since I discussed such a case: Abraham Cherrix, Sarah Hershberger, Daniel Hauser, Makayla Sault (who died), and, of course, Cassandra Callender.

Cassandra Callender was a particularly problematic case to me, and I want to update you on what’s happening because readers have written to me. But first a little background for those not familiar with the case. I considered her case problematic because she was 17 years old when she refused chemotherapy. She had developed Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a very treatable malignancy with an estimated expected survival rate of 85%. At the risk of being repetitive, I strongly believe that competent adults have the right to decided their own medical care. They can choose science-based medicine, no treatment at all, or even quackery; I consider it my mission to try to discourage the use of quackery through educating the public. Children are different, however. They depend on their parents and are not considered competent to make such life-or-death decisions. Of course, when children develop the ability to understand the consequences of their decisions is, of course, debatable, as a six year old or eight year old is quite different in his ability to reason and understand consequences than a 13 year old or 16 year old. We as a society have decided that 18 is the age of adulthood for legal purposes. I also realize that society has to pick a number. But what about 17 year olds? They’re pretty damned close to adults. Cassandra Callender was 17 when she was basically locked in a hospital room and forced to undergo chemotherapy. Yes, it was all for her own good, and legally she was not yet an adult, but if you don’t feel at least a little uneasy about her case, even if you ultimately decided it was the right thing to do to make sure she was treated, well, Mister (or Ms.) you’re a better man (or woman) than I.

Not surprisingly, Callender’s case became a cause célèbre among the alternative medicine crowd, as all such cases do—but even more so because of how old she was. Not surprisingly, a few weeks before she was to turn 18, Callender found her way to cancer quack Ty Bollinger, who interviewed her for his “Truth About Cancer” series as an example of “medical kidnapping.” During the interview, which is still in Bollinger’s series, Callender demonstrated magical thinking at ever level, believing that there really is another effective way to eradicate her cancer “naturally” or with homeopathy. At the same time, she hinted at bad news, mentioning a recent PET scan that “didn’t look good.”

Unfortunately, a few months later we learned that she had relapsed in the form of a mass in her lung. Fortunately, this being Hodgkin’s lymphoma, that wasn’t a death sentence. Her disease was far from terminal, but it would likely have required salvage chemotherapy followed by an autologous stem cell transplant. Basically, her bone marrow would be harvested for stem cells, and then she would undergo high dose chemotherapy to wipe out her bone marrow, after which she’d undergo a bone marrow transplant. Her expected survival? Between 40-60%.

So here’s what’s going on. I’ve recently been made aware of Callender’s GoFundMe page, and the news is not good. The page was set up on March 14, 2017, and this is the story:

This page has been set up to help raise money for Cassandra’s 2nd battle against Hodgkin’s lymphoma . In 2014 she was diagnosed and pronounced in remission after 6 months of chemotherapy in 2015. 9 months later in 2016 Cassandra had found out she relapsed with a mass in her left lung and surrounding neck/chest. She spent the whole year using alternative treatments / cannabis oils but unfortunately the cancer became more aggressive. In January of 2017 cassandra discovered that now both of her lungs are full of masses along with her surrounding lungs , chest , surrounding heart and neck . Cassandra now has to go through a very intensive 6-9 months of chemotherapy, again in hopes that things clear up. Her life expectancy doesn’t look well at the moment and it’s going to be quite the battle . She no longer has a normal breathing capacity and struggles with daily life functions that the sickness brings . She is unable to work, is now behind on bills and overall the financial struggle of going through this process yet again is taking a financial toll on her and her family . Any donations would be appreciated at this time . All donations will go directly to Cassandra. After going through this battle once already , Cassandra looks at life as everyday a gift especially when the next day is not promised .

So basically, the woo didn’t work and Callender’s disease is progressing alarmingly. Cannabis oils didn’t stop the cancer because cannabis does not cure cancer. Sadly, none of this is a surprise; untreated relapsed Hodgkin’s lymphoma is not going to go away on its own, and that’s basically what would have had to have happened for Callender to get better. At least she appears to be finally getting treatment again. This is something that’s common among those who choose quackery instead of medicine. When it becomes obvious even to them that the woo isn’t working; they go back to the chemotherapy. Unfortunately, by then it is often too late, or they have to undergo a much more rigorous, unpleasant treatment with less chance of success than they had before.

Maybe Callender’s use of chemotherapy explains a bit of something I noticed on Facebook. Not long before Callender set up her GoFundMe page, the despicable cancer quack Ty Bollinger posted this on his “Truth About Cancer” Facebook page:

Here’s the interesting thing. The Vimeo link to the video above is dead. Similarly, the link to a simila earlier video from Callender from 2016 that Ty Bollinger had posted to Facebook is also dead:

So clearly Callender had gone to Tony and Marcy Jimenez’s Hope 4 Cancer Institute in—where else?—Mexico, a mere 30 minutes south of the border near San Diego. In other words, this is a Tijuana quack clinic. And, boy, is it ever! Just take a look at what it offers:

Yes, any place that offers coffee enemas to treat cancer is a quack clinic par excellence, particularly when the practitioners there justify it the way Hope4Cancer does. Besides regurgitating the usual “death begins in the colon” tripe so beloved of those who think that toxins from built up poop in the colon cause cancer, the Jiminezes offer this gem:

Coffee from the coffee enemas (this is not regular coffee that is available in the market!) preferentially absorbs through the venous system in the lower part of the colon going directly to the liver. The coffee stimulates the liver to produce more bile that flushes out the toxins from the organ, This frees up the liver’s capacity to process more toxins instead of being in a constant state of overload. Without this detoxification, the toxins remain concentrated in the bloodstream and upstream in the various tissues and organs, causing overall toxicity in the body.

Only someone with minimal to no understanding of physiology could come up with a ridiculous explanation like this. Even if coffee did stimulate the liver to produce more bile that wouldn’t “free up the liver’s capacity to process more toxins instead of being in a constant state of overload.” That’s not how the liver works.

At Hope4Cancer Institute we require that the patients watch an Immuno-Imagery program, a health imaging video and audio series that promotes health from within. This unique self-imaging system combines the scientific discoveries of psychoneuroimmunology (the study of the interaction between the mind and the immune system) with the latest professional guided imagery and deep relaxation techniques of Emmett E. Miller, M.D., a nationally acclaimed physician specializing in Psychophysiological Medicine.

This comprehensive program contains time-lapse motion picture photography through a microscope of actual immune cells. It reveals captivating animation, coupled with an inspiring narration that describes just how the body defends itself. These images guide the patient through a visualization process that helps activate their immune system. The audio provides relaxation and visualization guidance with soothing music and calming sounds of nature. Dr. Miller comments, “IMMUNO-IMAGERY provides a crucial element in any program designed to support the healing process in a most beneficial way, providing clear, vivid images of healthy functioning immune cells doing exactly what you want them to do within your body.”

Great. So the Jimenezes sell the marks a bunch of videos of animations of how the immune system works with a soundtrack of soothing nature sounds as a method of showing patients how to tell their immune system to attack the cancer. Yeah, that’ll work. (That’s sarcasm, people.) I particularly like the woo babble (like Star Trek technobabble but with woo) about psychoneuroimmunology, proving once again that quacks can co-opt any scientific term in the service of selling stuff.

At Hope4Cancer Institute we have the technology and know-how to extract, from urine, the proteins that are produced by the cancer cells and develop a vaccine “Autologous Antigen Receptor Specific Oncogenic Target Acquisition” (AARSOTA). This vaccine is administered intramuscularly at specific intervals to promote an antigen-antibody response and provide immunological information to the antibodies. The immunological response enhances specific cancer fighting ability by the body’s defense system.

Tumor markers are measurable biochemicals that are associated with a malignancy. They are either produced by tumor cells (tumor-derived) or by the body in response to tumor cells (tumor-associated). They are typically substances that are released into the circulation and thus measured in the blood. There are a few exceptions to this, such as tissue-bound receptors that must be measured in a biopsy from the solid tumor or proteins that are secreted into the urine.

It all sounds pretty impressive; that is, if you don’t know anything about cancer. What amazed me even more is that the Jimenezes basically admit that what they are doing is complete bullshit:

As tumor cells grow and multiply, some of their substances can increase and leak into the bloodstream or other fluids. Depending upon the tumor marker, it can be measured in blood, urine, stool or tissue. Some widely used tumor markers include: AFP, beta-HCG, CA 15-3, CA 19-9, CA 27.29, CA 125, CEA, and PSA. Some tumor markers are associated with many types of cancer; others, with as few as one. Some tumor markers are always elevated in specific cancers; most are less predictable. However, no tumor marker is specific for cancer and most are found in low levels in healthy persons, or can be associated with non-neoplastic diseases as well as cancer. Also, no tumor marker test is free of false negatives or false positives.

Which basically tells you that trying to make a vaccine out of all these tumor markers isolated from the urine is doomed to failure. In the slideshow that accompanies this woo babble, slide 6 shows a list of cancer vaccines in development by other companies without noting that the antigens being targeted are far more specific to the tumors being treated. The presentation also includes a slide about how whole cell extracts are good sources of cancer antigens, as though this justifies the approach of extracting the urine. In particular, I note that not a single scientific paper or clinical trial is presented to justify the treatment, which is called “Autologous Antigen Receptor Specific Oncogenic Target Acquisition” (AARSOTA).

The case of Cassandra Callender saddens me. There’s no doubt that she got a raw deal, first being diagnosed with cancer and then being on the wrong end of the 85% survival rate for Hodgkin’s lymphoma when she relapsed. However, she still had a decent shot to salvage the situation. It would have been a hard and painful road. The high dose chemotherapy and autologous stem cell rescue still had about a 50-50 chance of failing. But the flip side of that is it also had a 50-59 chance of succeeding. By choosing quackery, unfortunately Cassandra Callender chose death, even as she thought she was choosing life. Her tumor progressed. Fortunately she appears to have realized her mistake, and it’s great that she’s finally fallen back on real medicine. I really do hope it can save her life, but there’s no doubt that her chances are much worse than they would have been if she hadn’t waited after her tumor relapses. That’s what quackery did; it diminished her chances of survival after relapse.

If she thinks that the quacks at Hope4Cancer and Ty Bollinger don’t know that, she should ask them why they’ve’ scrubbed her the two videos about her “journey” at Hope4Cancer from Vimeo. (Certainly I couldn’t find them.) The reason is simple. She is a testimonial they used to sell their quackery, and a patient dying of cancer doesn’t make a good sales tool. Neither does a patient who used quackery like the Jimenezes’ quackery at Hope4Cancer and seen her cancer continue to progress despite all the woo thrown at her.

Also, as much as I hate to say it, if Callender dies of her disease (and I really hope she doesn’t), quacks will oh-so-sadly and piously say it was because she didn’t stay the course with the Hope4Cancer quackery and instead underwent chemotherapy again. The chemotherapy, they will falsely claim, killed her and not the cancer. Quacks are predictable that way.

“not a single scientific paper or clinical trial is presented to justify the treatment, which is called “Autologous Antigen Receptor Specific Oncogenic Target Acquisition” (AARSOTA)”. Considering the part of the anatomy the treatment was pulled from, AARSOTA has an appropriate ring to it. But the real target of acquisition is the unfortunate cancer patient given to believe in the crap. Now, if Trump is still hell-bent on imposing trade sanctions on Mexico, I can’t think of a better one than the cancer quack clinics sanctioned by the government.

Of course they’ll blame the chemo – because it’s never the fault of the “alternative” cures themselves….of course, the majority of these “alternative” cures don’t do anything on a biological level, so the disease just takes its natural course.

This is really sad.
I clearly recall when she was first diagnosed and the controversy that ensued when she was forcibly treated. My view at the time was that, while intended to save her life, the actions of the State of Connecticut went way too far. Both her and her mother were opposed to chemotherapy, and it seemed (at the time) that Cassandra understood that refusing treatment would lead to her eventual death from HL-and, while she was just under 18, she seemed to understand what the consequences of refusing treatment would be.

I didn’t hear that she thought that “alternative treatments” would cure her cancer until she relapsed, and by that point, she was an adult.

The other thing is that, when the state steps in and forces treatment, it makes “us” (that is, proponents of science-based medicine) look bad in the eyes of some, and it probably gives the cancer quacks more fuel to rail against chemotherapy.

Certainly most people would feel uncomfortable with a 17-year old with cancer being taken from her home and family by child services, forcibly treated with chemotherapy, and not be allowed to have contact with her family during that period.

Ultimately, the question is “do the ends justify the means?”, and in this case I would have to say that they did not. In cases where the child is younger, I would say yes, but with a 17-year old, I just can’t say that they do.

@Lawrence-Yes, they probably will blame the chemo, even though she initially went into remission. Many quacks (especially homeopaths) claim that “conventional” treatments somehow “interfere” with the (nonexistent) ability of their so-called “treatments” to “work”.

@Orac-The GoFundMe page you quoted says “in January of 2017 cassandra discovered that now both of her lungs are full of masses along with her surrounding lungs , chest , surrounding heart and neck . Cassandra now has to go through a very intensive 6-9 months of chemotherapy, again in hopes that things clear up.”

But at the bottom of your post, you write “every week without effective treatment further diminishes the chances that Callender can be saved. I just hope she takes that chance and seeks real medical treatment instead of quackery as soon as possible.”

Doesn’t the GoFundMe page state that she finally has sought real medical treatment, and is now undergoing chemotherapy?

Yeah. Somehow an older version of the post posted where I didn’t notice that. I changed it to the right version. In my defense, I was writing this crammed in a plane on an overnight flight and the first time through didn’t read the GoFundMe page closely as I should have. I couldn’t sleep; so I blogged. I don’t know what happened. But, yes, thankfully she does appear to be getting treatment. That also explains why Hope4Cancer dropped her like a hot potato from its Vimeo page. I also note that, as I was trying to fix this, I somehow managed to reinstate the original version that was wrong about her seeking treatment. Damn WordPress. Sometimes its saving every version of a post can trip me up. This isn’t the first time this has happened.

Be that as it may, this little slip up shows Orac’s Tarial cells need recharging. Thanks for pointing out my mistake. I’ll now go and contemplate some black holes, as Orac does when his circuits are scrambled. Read the post now. It’s much clearer. I also changed the title and the blurb to make clear exactly what’s going on.

@Orac/others having gone through the ringer with a loved one i really appreciate these scientific and logical insights on the alternative medicine offerings that make decision making during an escalating health crisis even more challenging. That said the above focuses on how those alternative treatments have not saved her life,

What about sharing your insights on how the original chemotherapy treatment she was apparently forced into doing before she was declared an adult didn’t save her life either given the disease progressed? How do we know it actually left her better off vs worse? Is there ever a time when professionals using evidence based treatment approaches should be telling patients we are not likely going to be able to turn this around and you should focus on acceptance and quality over quantity of life? Thanks in advance for any insights on these aspects of the cancer treatment journey.

@Julian Frost-How are the two cases are similar, besides the fact that both of them fell victim to cancer quacks? Callender has Hodgkin’s disease, whereas Ainscough had epithelioid sarcoma.

Also, Ainscough initially underwent isolated limb perfusion (before she fell victim to the Gerson therapy quackery), which appears to have been effective, for a time. Since Ainscough had isolated limb perfusion, it seems tyo me that she may not have been as averse to treatment as Callender is/was, and that Ainscough may have only turned to quackery after her cancer returned and she was told that the only hope for a cure would be amputation of her arm at the shoulder. That’s obviously a far more radical intervention than chemo.

I remember her saying she was ready to die as well. At the time I wondered if a seventeen year old could really think that one through. But now I see that we were wrong–she was planning to cure herself with woo all the time. She just said that to get the doctors and judges to leave her alone.

Epithelioid sarcoma is a slow growing cancer, and that’s why she believed, for a time at least, that the Gerson “therapy” was “working”. In reality, of course, the slow progression was to be expected, and had nothing to do with coffee enemas or any of the other Gerson quackery that she fell victim to (and promoted).

@Christine Rose-I think charging anyone with manslaughter in this case is a real stretch, especially since she (against her will) did receive chemotherapy.

But there are other, somewhat similar cases, where people should have been prosecuted and were not. The worst example was in Australia, where a homeopath told a woman with colon cancer that she could cure her cancer, and convinced the woman not to undergo surgery and chemotherapy. Eventually, the poor woman developed bowel obstruction, and even then, when the woman was in extreme pain and would have had just a day or two to live without surgery, the homeopath continued to urge the woman not to have surgery.

At that point, the woman finally ignored the homeopath’s advice and underwent emergency surgery, but by then, the cancer had metastasized, it was too late, and the woman died of metastatic colon cancer 2 years later.

In my opinion, the homeopath absolutely should have been charged with manslaughter. But she wasn’t.

@Christine Rose-“I remember her saying she was ready to die as well. At the time I wondered if a seventeen year old could really think that one through. ”

Some have argued that adolescents are mature enough to make such decisions. Christopher Doig and Ellen Burgess, of the University of Calgary, wrote: “Life and death are concrete concepts clearly understood by adolescents. There is a clear ethical and legal foundation for permitting competent adolescents to decide if they will accept life-sustaining medical treatment.”
(Source: Withholding life-sustaining treatment: Are adolescents competent to make these decisions?, Canadian Medical Association Journal, 2000).

Of course, if Callender believed that she could be cured with quackery all along, as it now seems, then she wouldn’t have viewed chemotherapy as necessary to save her life, and therefore couldn’t be considered competent to make such a decision.

There is so much to feel about cases like this but really so little to say. It is a life wasted on a delusion. Does it make much difference that the delusion is quackery as opposed to, say, religious zealotry (Buddhists self-immolating in protest)?

When people abandon reason for belief, the result is all too often tragic.

“Life and death are concrete concepts clearly understood by adolescents. There is a clear ethical and legal foundation for permitting competent adolescents to decide if they will accept life-sustaining medical treatment.”

This analysis fails to take into account understanding of the manner of death.

Does it make much difference that the delusion is quackery as opposed to, say, religious zealotry (Buddhists self-immolating in protest)?

The boldfaced part is far more complicated than you seem to think. Moreover, if the reference is to Thích Quảng Đức, (1) he was a Mahayanist and (2) it was a political action rather than “religious zealotry.”* One may as well classify enlisting in the military as a category of delusion under this gloss.

* Robert Buswell does recount some cases of Korean monks engaging in a form of one-upsmanship in terms of who can burn off more fingers. Burning off one was used as a way to avoid military conscription.

Is there ever a time when professionals using evidence based treatment approaches should be telling patients we are not likely going to be able to turn this around and you should focus on acceptance and quality over quantity of life?

This is not such a case. Orac described the science-based treatment as having an 85% chance of a cure.

I admire your compassion; I guess that’s why you’re a doctor and I wouldn’t even want to be one. I saw the most dismissive, snotty doctor ever today, but I’d see him again if I needed to and there was no one else, before I’d turn to woo. I have a hard time feeling sorry for believers, be it woo or magical sky beings. It might be the “mild autism”, and I do hope this young woman gets well, mostly because then hopefully she will have learned her lesson and spread that anecdote.

What about sharing your insights on how the original chemotherapy treatment she was apparently forced into doing before she was declared an adult didn’t save her life either given the disease progressed? How do we know it actually left her better off vs worse?

Naively, I think most people would file remission under “better off.” You’d need to define your terms more carefully to shift it over.

Is there ever a time when professionals using evidence based treatment approaches should be telling patients we are not likely going to be able to turn this around and you should focus on acceptance and quality over quantity of life?

You bet your sweet bippy. I’ll be damned if I can really figure out why my mom rejected a home hospice nurse.

Meanwhile, from the Hope For Anna Facebook page postings it sound’s like Anna’s brain tumor is growing (but Burzynski is calling it inflammation and not tumor growth) and Burzynski has the family flying back to Houston to try some new pill he “discovered” in Europe. Translation: Burzynski needs more $$$.

@Julian Frost-How are the two cases are similar, besides the fact that both of them fell victim to cancer quacks?

Both had diseases that were treatable with evidence based medicine. Both decided to forego evidence based medicine. Jess Ainscough died, and it appears a virtual certainty that Cassandra Callender will also pay with her life.
@Rebecca, no. I haven’t seen anything about what happened to him.
If anyone knows if Krebiozen is still alive, what happened to him, why he’s no longer commenting, I would appreciate it if you could tell us.

Also both of them were/are attractive young women, still outwardly healthy, appealing to the generous, and articulate enough to convince the ignorant. And both of them had to admit they were wrong and risk offending their fans. A toddler may tug at more heartstrings, but babies don’t have to have that moment when the truth clamps its slimy jaws right down onto what would have saved you two years ago…and belches in your face.

LW: She had an 85% cure rate in the first go round, when she was 17. I’m unclear whether or not she completed that first go round after she turned 18. IIRC she stopped short but was in remission. Now her chances of a cure are a mere 40-60%, and I tend to think more towards the latter end. It gets worse the more she delayed treatment. Metastasis has already occurred; by the time you get this, your chances really go down even with aggressive treatment.

Not impossible. Her age benefits her; younger, healthier people are better able to withstand the rigors of chemo or radiation than older people with other health problems to complicate things.

And while I suspect myusrn is playing the “reasonable approach” argument to supporting woo, she does ask a valid question:

“Is there ever a time when professionals using evidence based treatment approaches should be telling patients we are not likely going to be able to turn this around and you should focus on acceptance and quality over quantity of life?”

The answer to that question is a qualified “Yes.” Experienced oncologists and oncology surgeons generally are able to tell when a patient is not responding to treatment, or when treatment is not likely to be successful in the first place, and are able to so accordingly inform, advise, and educate the patient. I say a qualified yes, because physicians are human beings. They may over estimate their ability to help the patient, and recommend a continuation of a treatment that is hopeless. They may hesitate to tell a patient the truth, fearing the patient will lose hope. Or they may under estimate the effect the treatment is having and recommend hospice care too soon. It would be disingenuous to suggest physicians never make mistakes.

But the majority of the time, they don’t. Experience counts for a lot. When I worked as a hospice nurse, I got to know a lot of the local oncologists fairly well as they referred a lot of our patients to us. Their patients were going through a lot and they did the best they could for them.

So, myusrn, here’s a primer on how fractionated dosing works to answer your other question about why her first round didn’t save her. Bear in mind, this is the Reader’s Digest version.

Any cell has four stages of growth, including cancer cells. Some forms of chemo will kill in any of the cell cycles, other forms target the cell in a specific growth state. Radiation therapy targets a specific part of the cycle. Giving the patient the whole dose of chemo or radiation would likely kill the patient, since both therapies affect healthy as well as unhealthy cells. So the therapies are given over time, to be better tolerated, and to ensure you get all the cancer.

That’s why surgery for solid tumors is essential in many forms of cancer; get the bulk out early enough, follow up with chemo, and the 5 year survival rate gets much much better.

But when you delay treatment, you make it harder to get all the cancer. If it starts to spread, its’ even worse. Not impossible but the further you go the more unlikely it gets. Cancers often find their way into the lymphatic system, which is like a highway system for cancer cells. They travel everywhere eventually, and take root in distant parts of the body. NHL is a blood cancer, but it can still do this, and that’s what happened to Cassandra Callender. That’s why she needed a bone marrow transplant and stem cells.

Problem is if you don’t finish the treatment, even if the cancer goes into remission, it tends to come back harder later on. That’s why Orac writes about these cases so often . . . they are such tragedies because they are so avoidable, and because they are used to fool people into thinking they can stop EBM when they really can’t.

Coffee enemas aren’t going to do jack for a cancer of the white blood cells.

@Julian Frost (#32)
Yes there are some similarities. But there are also significant differences. Callender’s case is well-known mostly because she was a minor at the time that she refused treatment, and therefore she was forced to receive chemotherapy.

In contrast, Ainscough was an an adult when she was diagnosed, so her right to refuse treatment was never even a question.

Also, Callender was refusing *all* treatment when she was first diagnosed, whereas while Ainscough refused the recommended treatment (amputation of her arm), she was initially treated with isolated limb perfusion, which was effective for a time.

Finally, the cancers that the two have/had are much different. Hodgkin’s disease has a good prognosis, and as mentioned, Callender’s chance of survival with treatment was at least 85% in 2014. The prognosis for epithelioid sarcoma is much more guarded, and the treatment that could have cured Ainscough (amputation of her arm at the shoulder, perhaps followed by chemotherapy) is much more radical than the treatment for Hodgkin’s disease. Since Ainscough accepted isolated limb perfusion, it seems likely to me that had she had Hodgkin’s disease, she would have accepted chemotherapy. It was the fact that she required amputation of her arm-obviously a life-altering intervention-that drove her to seek out quackery in place of real medical treatment.

But I think the biggest difference is that Ainscough promoted herself for years as a “success story” for years, whereas Callender didn’t.

@Panacea-BTW, there have been some advances in the treatment of patients with HL, who have relapsed after a bone marrow transplant, in the last couple of years. Treatment with brentuximab vedotin can put some patients with relpased/refractory HL into remission, at least for a time. I don’t think that most of those patients remain in remission, though.

Also, the checkpoint inhibitors pembrolizumab and nivolumab have both shown efficacy in the setting of HL that has relapsed after a bone marrow transplant, and some of the HL patients who responded to checkpoint inhibitors have had durable responses (perhaps, some of these patients have been cured, but much longer follow up will be needed before you can conclude that checkpoint inhibitors can cure HL).

Cassadra Callender’s case is complicated not just because she was a minor, but by the role of her mother – who was/is the true vehement woo fanatic driving the alt treatment and the rejection of chemo. There was some evidence that Cassnadra herself was conflicted about her mom in general, and about the treatment choice. When the State tried to force her into chemo she may have blanched because she’d already had her fill of folks telling her what to do, and that may have seemed somehow worse somehow than the familiar entreaties of ‘mom’, tilting her teenage rebelliousness back toward home. (I speculate wildly, of course…)

I was kind of surprised she continued on the pure woo path after becoming an adult and being able to make her own choices. I’d guess the diagnosis of remission was enough to let her hope she could avoid the very difficult path of conventional treatment for her cancer, and bought into the hope that the cannabis etc. would help prevent it’s return. I’d guess further that if she had ever truly gone full-faith in the woo, instead of just cross-you-fingers hope, she wouldn’t have abandoned it even after discovering the relapse…

I wonder if she’ll make any statements about her story, now that she’s trying to raise money to fund chemo. Which, btw, is a crime, as we should have universal national health insurance that covers this. Of course, she has a pre-existing condition, and life-saving treatment in the GOP’s Muricah is a privilege for the privileged, not a right for the hoi poloi.
______

For the record, Makayla Sault’s family only claimed to be “using indigenous people’s medicine” as a ruse to block any attempt by Child Services to take her into custody. Her parents were born-again Christians, who were actually relying on faith-healing to save her, as she was publicly ‘cured’ by televangelist Ted Shuttlesworth at a revival in Sarnia. McMaster Children’s Hospital also bears some responsibility for her death by going postal when her parents first refused chemo and referring the case to Child Services instead of the State Board that could have placed her under a mandated treatment plan without challenging custody.

There are hundreds of thousands of cases just like Cassandra’s among people who pursued only conventional cancer treatments. Many die every single day.

There is no way to know if Cassandra would have been better off had she pursued more of the conventional treatment she received the first time around–the one that pronounced her “in remission”–only to learn nine months later she had more cancer that had already spread.

This story–of “successful” conventional treatment, followed within a few years by relapse with more cancer that is more widespread and virulent–is a very familiar one. For those patients, there is only compassion, and no ridicule for their poor choice of treatment that left them dead.

Hope4Cancer offers quite an assortment of quackery. It also seems to have a large fan base because of Bollinger’s Truth About Cancer film.

Interestingly, they offer one treatment modality that might seem more legitimate than a coffee enema to the average person, because it is actually registered as a drug somewhere – Rigvir oncolytic virus, for skin melanoma, which was also praised in Truth About Cancer. But that is only the case if you don’t check PubMed, don’t know about its background in its home country Latvia, suspicious registration without proper evidence from clinical trials, countless breaches of drug advertising laws, and the fact that oncologist associations in Latvia have asked for its removal from drug register due to insufficient evidence: http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1spm0ua

Hope4Cancer is an exclusive partner of Global Virotherapy Cancer Clinic in Latvia. Some time ago I looked at Gofundme.com requests for donations for Rigvir treatments, mostly at “Rigvir certified” Hope4Cancer clinics, but also in Latvia and some German quack clinics. For 79 patients the total value of requested money was well above 3 million euros, people from all walks of life are selling their houses, emptying savings and pension funds just to end up dead or with a progressing disease due to this Latvian “miracle drug”.

Based on the posts on “The Other Burzynski Patient Group” page, it sounds like Anna is suffering from the inevitable effects of “non-treatment” and is going down the path of many of his other patients.

NWO Troll: yes, many patients with cancer die every day. Don’t remind me: they made up a large part of my hospice client group. I know far more about what it’s like to watch someone die with cancer than you ever will (and that includes watching my father die from liver cancer).

What you ignore is that treatments for some kinds of cancer have gotten a lot better. It’s getting rare for someone to die of cervical cancer today, and I can see a day when no one does because we’ll have eliminated 90% of the cause through vaccination. That means those women won’t have to worry about the risk miscarrying their babies because of an incompetent cervix, or ever have to go through surgery, radiation, or chemo.

But when Henrietta Lacks got cervical cancer in the 50’s, there wasn’t any effective treatment at all, and it was usually caught late, and was a death sentence.

We’re doing better with other cancers now as well thanks to routine screening, and early treatment and intervention . . . so well, we now have to be careful not to over diagnose so as to avoid unnecessary treatment and anxiety.

You mean ‘we’ have figured out people survive longer after diagnosis if the cancer is detected earlier. Shocker. The same would be true without any treatment at all. Just one of the obvious ways the cancer industry manipulates perceptions.

@NWOR (#39). You know nothing. Chemotherapy has saved countless lives. Does it have serious adverse effects? Of course, but without it, the survival rate for someone in Cassandra’s situation is 0%.

Numerous forms of cancer, including Hodgkin’s disease, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, Wilms’ tumor, and
testicular cancer, are highly responsive to chemotherapy and the survival rates for these forms of cancer have improved from essentially 0% before the development of chemotherapy to, in many cases, more than 80% today.

Testicular cancer is often curable with chemotherapy even if it is has metastasized at the time of diagnosis, and more than 80% of pediatric patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common form of childhood cancer, are cured of their disease (unfortunately, the prognosis for ALL in adults is significantly poorer).

The prognosis for Hodgkin’s lymphoma has also dramatically improved, and the 5-year survival rate for all HL patients is now around 85% (in patients under 20, it is even higher).

Sadly, Cassandra was one of the very unlucky patients who relapsed-but even she still has some chance of survival with real medical treatment (whereas if she had continued with the quackery, she would have had absolutely no chance of survival).

In case you missed it…Cassandra tried conventional cancer treatment first. The cancer industry deemed it a “success”–but nine months later, she had more cancer than she started out with. Seems like any rational person would be less than impressed with the end result.

“Some have argued that adolescents are mature enough to make such decisions. Christopher Doig and Ellen Burgess, of the University of Calgary, wrote: “Life and death are concrete concepts clearly understood by adolescents. There is a clear ethical and legal foundation for permitting competent adolescents to decide if they will accept life-sustaining medical treatment.”
(Source: Withholding life-sustaining treatment: Are adolescents competent to make these decisions?, Canadian Medical Association Journal, 2000).”

The crucial word in all of that is “competent”, which IME of working with adolescents who gave the appearance of wanting to be dead, needs, as per UK-ian law, to be assessed on a case by case and appointment by appointment basis.

I certainly met numerous adolescents who certainly appeared to be competent, but, when one explored their views about death and what it meant in more detailed, actually displayed a whole load of magical thinking, strongly suggesting that they did NOT understand these “concrete concepts”.

This is one of those areas where it is almost always more complicated than that…

@Murmur- Well, if someone believes in an afterlife, then in my book they are displaying thinking that is, to say the least, not in touch with reality-so if you look at it that way, the majority of people are displaying thinking about death that is inconsistent with reality (yes, I know, I know, the religious people commenting here will point out that there is no *absolute proof* that there is not an afterlife, but there is zero reason to believe that there is).

I’m assuming that the magical thinking you are making reference to went way beyond just believing in an afterlife, since many people believe in that, but I still couldn’t resist pointing out the fact that the majority of people do not understand the concrete reality of death (i.e., that once you die, your brain ceases to function, and therefore there cannot be any consciousness after death-and that since everything that makes a person a person is the brain, once their brain ceases to function, they cease to exist).

Panacea, I was saying that, in a way, the majority of people don’t have a “concrete understanding” of death, because they believe in an afterlife. Basically, I was using Murmur’s comment about adolescents having “magical thinking” around death to make fun of the fact that so many people believe in an afterlife.

It is really obvious that the “magical thinking” that Murmur was referring to goes way beyond belief in an afterlife, and I was clearly not suggesting, in my previous comment, that those who believe in an afterlife are not competent to make their own medical decisions. I was just pointing out that a lot of people have beliefs that could also be viewed as “magical thinking” or something similar.

Yes, Jonas. I get you were making fun of the fact so many people believe in an afterlife.

I believe in an afterlife. What’s that got to do with the price of tea in China? Ones belief in an afterlife or a greater power has no bearing on ones ability to understand death, or to make competent decisions on their health care.

And whatever you were trying to say about Murmur’s opinion, you said it poorly because you definitely sent the message that anyone who believes in an afterlife believes in magical thinking.

Even if you are not attaching those beliefs to medical decisions, those beliefs still impact health and coping with severe illness. Spirituality, a belief in a higher power, and an afterlife are powerful tools for patients coping with life threatening or altering medical issues.

@Panacea
“And whatever you were trying to say about Murmur’s opinion, you said it poorly because you definitely sent the message that anyone who believes in an afterlife believes in magical thinking.”

But Panacea, that is, in fact, accurate. There is no proof of gods or afterlife. Believing in those things is a choice based on supposition. If you don’t want to call that “magical thinking” propose another term. But from the perspective of logic and reason …

Actually, she was in remission, but refused to continue the treatments which would have given her a better chance of not suffering a relapse (she specifically rejected conventional treatment as soon as she turned 18).

You mean ‘we’ have figured out people survive longer after diagnosis if the cancer is detected earlier. Shocker. The same would be true without any treatment at all.

Wait, what? Are you saying that earlier diagnosis on its own and no treatment is enough to up survival rates? Seriously?

In case you missed it…Cassandra tried conventional cancer treatment first. The cancer industry deemed it a “success”–but nine months later, she had more cancer than she started out with.,/blockquote>
And how much more cancer would she have had had she not had any treatment?
I’m amazed at you, NWO Reporter. Do you not realise how idiotic your arguments look?

You are so utterly corrupt. “Survival rates” are always measured by a specific time period. Of course someone diagnosed earlier rather than later will survive longer after diagnosis, with or without treatment.

You can speculate all you want about how much cancer Cassandra would have had without the conventional treatment that left her with more of it, but that’s all it is–speculation. What a pathetic attempt to tout a treatment than was a spectacular failure.

You are so utterly corrupt. “Survival rates” are always measured by a specific time period. Of course someone diagnosed earlier rather than later will survive longer after diagnosis, with or without treatment.

You can speculate all you want about how much cancer Cassandra would have had without the conventional treatment that left her with more of it, but that’s all it is–speculation. What a pathetic attempt to tout a treatment than was a spectacular failure.

Oh my goodness, no much misinformation in so few words!

” “Survival rates” are always measured by a specific time period.” Ya think? We all die. Sometimes we die of cancer that had been in remission. But we measure our progress in treating cancer by noting changes in survival rates at some interval – usually 5 or 10 years. Few scientists ever speak of a cancer as having been cured; there is nearly always some chance of recurrence. But while most cancer diagnoses were death sentences only a few generations ago, today many cancer diagnosees go on to complete remission and eventually die of an unrelated condition.

“You can speculate…” You should understand that it really isn’t speculation, it is a judgment based on the treatment of others with similar staging at the time of diagnosis. There are, of course, no guarantees. We all have different genetic profiles and sometimes respond differently to treatment. But to suggest any relationship between survival probabilities with or without treatment is simply wrong.

All this smug condescension and sugar coating…yet still, we have a woman who underwent conventional treatment and wound up with more cancer than she started with.

“No, it wasn’t a failure! It was a medical miracle! The statistics prove it! Her only hope for survival is more of the same!” Right. And doctors wonder why so many people distrust the cancer industry and are seeking out alternatives. It’s like a dark satire.

“Her only hope for survival is more of the same!” Right. And doctors wonder why so many people distrust the cancer industry and are seeking out alternatives. It’s like a dark satire.”

Yes NWO, her only hope is more of the same. Her best hope would have been to stay with the program without interruption.

Doctors don’t wonder why some people distrust or fear cancer treatment. Cancer is a terrible disease (actually, a suite of diseases). Cancer treatment usually demands intimidating radiation treatments and/or noxious chemotherapy. It is sometimes horrific and it is never pleasant. How much more inviting to believe that coffee enemas and macrobiotic rice will make it all better. It won’t.

Cancer physicians didn’t wish cancer on their patients. They are exquisitely trained men and women who have devoted their lives to driving cancers into remission. They don’t always succeed. But the odds get better every year.

Whether one let’s fear and superstition control their life and death is a personal choice. make it wisely.

No doubt a lot of people think so. Still, anyone who doesn’t get at least two or three opinions to confirm their cancer diagnosis and recommend a treatment is taking a serious risk with their life. For every doctor who has been exposed as a cancer charlatan, there are likely at least a 100 more.

@NWOR (#50)-She went into remission after receiving chemotherapy. The majority of patients with HL (typically more than 85%, and, in some subgroups of patients without adverse prognostic indicators, 95%) remain in remission after treatment and never have a relapse(as a matter of fact, I know a guy whose son had HL-he had chemo and is now cancer-free, years later), but unfortunately, Cassandra Callender is one of the approximately 15% of HL patients who will relapse.

I already discussed how the development of effective chemotherapy has improved the prognosis for patients with many forms of cancer in comment #49. I certainly could expand on that comment, and discuss how more recent advances (e.g., the development of the immune checkpoint inhibitors pembrolizumab and nivolumab) have improved the prognosis for patients with advanced cancer who previously had few if any treatment options.

However, based on your comments here, and on your previous comments regarding vaccination, it appears that you are someone who is vehemently opposed to all conventional medical intervention, regardless of the evidence of it’s efficacy.

“Remission,” eh? Nine months after that pronouncement of “success,” her body was riddled with cancer–more than she had before the treatment. It didn’t grow overnight. Sounds like that “remission” was more like a coffee break. Obviously, the conventional treatments didn’t work well for her. With “success” like that, it’s no wonder she sought out alternatives.

You can neither prove nor disprove an afterlife because science investigates the natural world, not the supernatural. It doesn’t even LOOK at the supernatural world, which is as it should be.

People have experiences that no one can explain using scientific methods. I’ve had them. That’s not enough to convince everyone and that’s OK. Something happened to me. I call it spiritual. You can’t call it magical thinking simply because you don’t understand it.

I don’t need to prove or disprove an afterlife or the god that would be all but necessitated by the existence of an afterlife. To accept the existence of a god or an afterlife as fact there needs to be clear evidence. There is not. Absent that evidence there is only belief. People believe in ghosts, fairies, yetis, sasquatches, and little green men. And gods. Doesn’t make any of them real.

@Panacea (#56). It is my view that religion, belief in afterlife, etc, is a psychological coping mechanism. It is much more pleasant to believe that your loved ones are in heaven than it is to accept the reality that they are gone, and it is much more pleasant to believe that you will go to heaven when you die than it is to accept that death=eternal oblivion.

In view of that, belief in an afterlife could be considered to be, basically, a very comforting delusion.

That being said, I agree with you when you say “it is a cornerstone of good nursing care to respect that regardless of what I personally believe”, and I will also note that nobody here is trying to impose their atheism on anyone else, nor do I think anyone here has any problem with what anyone else believes, as long as it is not imposed on others.

Your condescension is hysterical. Her body with riddled with cancer only 9 months after the doctors pronounced her conventional treatment a “success.” And we should hail it as a miracle. You are a great illustration of why so many people are seeking out alternative treatments. 😀

@Panacea-You must be a faster typist than me-I typed the above response before I saw that you’d posted your most recent comment (#65) We’ll have to just agree to disagree on this issue (which is fine).

Cassandra Callender seems to have finally realized that the “alternative treatments” she was getting were worthless, and that she needed real treatment-hopefully, she didn’t reach that conclusion too late.

Once again, you ‘forget’ to mention that she started out with the ‘real’ treatment she ‘needed.’ Nine months later, her body was riddled with more cancer than she started out with. I’d call that a spectacular failure. It’s hardly a surprise she decided to try alternatives the next time around.

@NWOR-Chemotherapy is not always effective (in this specific case, it was partially effective, in that she did go into remission for a time, but then relapsed), but quackery (you call it “alternative” treatment, I’m going to just call a spade a spade and refer to it as quackery) is NEVER effective, and hasn’t saved ANYONE from dying of cancer.

And it is still possible that Cassandra will survive with real treatment-unfortunately, she delayed getting treatment, which has hurt her chances of survival, but there is still some hope.

And it’s possible Cassandra would be better off now had she not pursued conventional treatment the first time around. And it’s possible she’d be dead by now if she had pursued more conventional treatment instead of alternatives the second time around. Speculate all you want–that’s all it is. You can’t disguise that in condescending judgments and directives, and it’s not your life at stake.

You repeat the same nonsense despite having had the facts explained to you. One wonders if you came by this refractory ignorance through some intellectual defect of if you are simply being an ass.

Probability and speculation are entirely different things. The high probability is that she would have achieved and maintained complete remission had she completed the prescribed therapy and complied with the follow-up program prescribed by her physician.

A similarly high probability accompanies the choice of quackery in place of medicine and that probability is for the disease to run its course culminating in the death of the patient.

There are no guarantees either way. A vanishingly small number of patients spontaneously remit and remain in remission. A relatively small number of patients receiving conservative medical treatment will succumb to the disease despite early diagnosis and appropriate care. The first is like playing Russian Roulette with 6 of 6 chambers loaded and hoping for a misfire.

You can’t seriously believe a slew a derision hides the fact you are speaking out of both sides of your mouth. Of course there are no guarantees. Yet you arrogantly dictate choices about someone else’s life, as if you are God. I thought you didn’t believe in God.

You misrepresent what I’ve said. I dictate nothing. Each adult – and I’ll give this young lady credit for being an adult at 17 – get’s to make her own choices. Sometimes we make stupid choices. Sometimes we pay for those choices with our lives.

NWOR, do you accept that ANY conventional medicine is effective? Are you so far gone that you wouldn’t even agree to take antibiotics if you had a bacterial infection?

I’d like to think you would, but your unwillingness to acknowledge that chemotherapy is effective and your ludicrous attempt to blame Cassandra’s relapse on the chemotherapy that she received in 2015, combined with your anti-vaccine statements on another thread, makes me really wonder.

@NWOR (#79). No, actually, that’s not possible-there is absolutely no possible way that she’d be better off if she hadn’t received treatment in 2015. It is possible (very likely, in fact), that she would have already died of Hodgkin’s if she hadn’t had chemotherapy in 2015.

NWO @89: Would you take the 5 yer survival rates for HL before treatments were developed?

Or do you want us to go back in time to just before Cassandra had her first chemotherapy treatment and split the timeline so we can compare treated and untreated Cassandra? You would have to do that, I’m not allowed to mess with the timelines any more.

As someone who was actually treated for Hodgkins that didn’t respond to front-line treatment, I am incredibly thankful that my oncologist looked me in the eye and said, “you’ll be dead in two years if you don’t get a stem-cell transplant”. That was 9 years ago. If there is an 85% success rate for initial treatment that means, of course, that 15% may need additional treatment. I have completly recovered, although I realize that I face some future risks associated with my treatment. But life is a risk. I wake up every day thankful that I am fit, happy, and on no meds associated with my treatment or transplant! BTW, other cancer patients I met along the way, who post-poned or declined cancer treatment DIED. Sure, I know that is anecdotal evidence, but it still vivid to me.

“She was pronounced “in remission,” and nine months later her body was riddled with more cancer.”

First, being in remission doesn’t necessarily mean that chemotherapy should cease. It means that the disease is in remission and usually chemotherapy continues for a period after the onset of remission.

Next, what exactly occurred in the none months between remission and the finding of resurgent cancer? She turned 18 and refused continuing medical treatment in favor of a cancer quack. When she finds out she’s facing resurgent disease she doubles down on the quackery … at least for a while. Now she’s back to chemo and, one presumes, desperately hoping that she didn’t squander her chances for a long life.

Interesting theory. Do you have access to her medical records? Because there’s no indication on her GoFundMe page that she rejected conventional treatments in between the time the doctors pronounced her in remission, and the time they discovered more cancer.

“there’s no indication on her GoFundMe page that she rejected conventional treatments in between the time the doctors pronounced her in remission, and the time they discovered more cancer.”

No, I would expect not. I do not get my information from GoFundMe pages. If you do, there is little for us to discuss. Take a bit of time and compare the timeline on the GoFundMe and the timeline on Ty Bollinger’s Truth About Cancer page.

Holy cow, that’s quite a frightening story–I had no idea how bad our medical police state is becoming.

Anyway, I can’t find any support on Bollinger’s page or elsewhere for your contention that conventional treatments were recommended but rejected from the time she was pronounced “in remission” at age 17, to the time they discovered more cancer, at age 18. So my tentative conclusion is you are being deceptive, again. But by all means, clear it up with substantiation for your claim.

Ginny: “You mean discontinued when she discovered her body was riddled with cancer again?”

Finally, the little light bulb goes on for Ginny!! Congratulations! Cassandra gave up on cannabis oil and other types of wishful wooful thinking when she discovered that they had done nothing to slow down her cancer. She returned to the only treatment which demonstrated ANY results: chemotherapy, aka evidence-based medicine.
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For the longest time I thought you were pretending to be incredibly stupid, but now that you’ve established tangential contact with reality I see that it was no act.

Nice try, Opie. The issue was when she discontinued the CONVENTIONAL treatment she started with. You know–the one that left her body riddled with more cancer than she started with. It was after that debacle with conventional treatment that she tried alternative treatments. But then, you know that. 😉

“It was after that debacle with conventional treatment that she tried alternative treatments.”

Your reading comprehension is as abysmal as your reasoning skills. She abandoned conventional care upon reaching 18 years of age, shortly after the cancer was in remission. Being in remission DOES NOT mean that treatment stops. It means that treatment is working and needs to continue.

Nope, doesn’t sound that way. Sounds like she underwent the complete course of recommended conventional treatment (forcibly), was pronounced in remission, and 9 months later, when a mass was discovered in her lung, she rejected more conventional treatment.

@NWO Distorter #97
Sorry, my mistake. You really ARE that stupid.
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In # 70 you say that she was riddled with cancer nine months after stopping treatment. By comment #97 she stopped treatment because it left her riddled with cancer.
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Behold the woonatic mind at work: believing two contradictory ‘facts’ on the same day on the same forum.
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Ginny: here’s a pro tip from my grandmother: “If you don’t lie you don’t have to try to keep your stories straight.”

Be careful about discarding elements of traditional medicine, would you laugh at treating someone with a bacterial infection with bread mould or externally with the oil of the tea tree, insect infestations with a chrysanthemum, perhaps a headache and fever with white willow bark or even constipation with the leaves and fruit of the senna plant, pain with poppies, or burns with bandages impregnated with silver. Each of these natural treatments are common and proven medical realities. There is NO doubt that some natural substances help with some cancers, tea tree oil for some skin cancer for example. Capsicum (capsicum)shows some efficacy in the lab against cancer, as does ginger and garlic probably due to antiviral/ antibacterial /anti fungal properties where cancer is related to a pathogen.. Willow bark (aspirin) has been shown in some studies to reduce the incidence of metastasis. Other things can make cancer worse, for example estrogenic compounds, possibly condroitin. Modern medicine isn’t foolproof either, the common biopsy procedure is suspected of inducing metastasis. While I would never counsel avoiding modern medicine altogether, there is no doubt that diet and general health plays a major role in long term survival and maintaining a sense of order and hope for the patient. Does that excuse outright quackery, well no, but a real scientist would look for adjucts that help the patient even in small ways.

“This page has been set up to help raise money for Cassandra’s 2nd battle against Hodgkin’s lymphoma . In 2014 she was diagnosed and pronounced in remission after 6 months of chemotherapy in 2015. 9 months later in 2016 Cassandra had found out she relapsed with a mass in her left lung and surrounding neck/chest. She spent the whole year using alternative treatments / cannabis oils but unfortunately the cancer became more aggressive.”

So, after convention treatments, she went into remission.

She relapsed & tried “alternative” treatments – and after a year, her Cancer got worse.

Yeah, that’s the point. She wasn’t too impressed with her forced conventional cancer treatment, given that only nine months after it was pronounced a “success,” she was riddled with more cancer again. Can’t really blame her for deciding to try alternatives instead.

How many people who have undergone ONLY conventional cancer treatment are lying on their death bed right now? There must be hundreds at least, probably thousands.

Think how comforting it would be for them to read an article about how they did the right thing–how they made the right choice by avoiding all those alternative and complementary treatments. Just think–this blog could be used to provide them comfort in their time of greatest crisis. Instead, it’s used to attack a young woman in her time of crisis for her personal health care decisions. You’d think her medical arrest and forced chemo would be enough punishment for a lifetime–it’s truly a horrific story. But we all know that wouldn’t sell the agenda quite as well.

@Julian Frost, #124: Of course it does. If you’re dead from a first cancer, your probability of a second cancer is 0. OTOH, if chemo, radiation, and/or surgery allowed you to survive that first one, you have a probability of a second one that’s greater than 0.

@122: Well, dying from one kind of cancer unquestionably makes it rather unlikely to get cancer again… Correlation and causality, the claim is still an exercise in statistical sewer diving (increase from dumpster diving).

@NWO Reporter: Yeah, I know you’re a troll, but I still want to respond: Your arguments against evidence-based medicine are so vile to patients like me who had to make decisions about cancer treatment. I faced an onslaught of information about how chemo would kill me. Every time I walked in a grocery store there would be some free “Natural Awakenings” magazine telling me that Cannaboid Oil would be curative. Or coffee enemas, or mushrooms, or Vitamin C, or some other “woo of the month”. The internet was filled with websites offering every form of BS. It was a terribly frightening period for me. I didn’t want chemo and I sure didn’t want a stem-cell transplant, but I had to face the facts: I didn’t want to die in a year or two. Looking back, 9 years later, I am SO GRATEFUL that this technology was available to me. And I am SO annoyed when I see hucksters trying to sell BS that “cures cancer” either for their direct profit or to just flip off “the medical establishment” , “the man”, “Big Pharma”.
NWO Reporter: you probably wouldn’t be alive today, if it weren’t for the progress made in the last 50 years by medical science.

Well said, @Marie #131.
If it wasn’t so tragic for the girl involved, NWO reporter’s mangled concepts of lymphoma remission and relapse would be very amusing.
I wonder what his/her take on “remission” as defined by Burzinski and fellow snakeoil merchants would be?

When people irritatingly use the nested “reply” function, which doesn’t appear on the Web site proper but only in the E-mail notifications, all of the following comments get renumbered. Oh, and one has to scroll back through the whole freaking thread to find the damn reply.

This is how we know that NWO is a full-on troll: they don’t have any suggestions. At least our idee fixee trolls have a suggestion (even if it is the same thing every time), but NWO just says “NO!” to everything.
There is nothing that NWO likes or wants except an opportunity to be contrarian.

Talking ABOUT a troll is totally different from interacting WITH a troll, right?? I’d never want to feed a troll. . .
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Narad said “Where, precisely, is that part, fυckstain?”
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Which got me thinking. Fuckstain Ginny would be a wonderful band name, topped only by:
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APPEARING TONIGHT!!FUCKSTAIN GINNY AND THE STONERS</b
Performance art based on the premise that talent, expertise, education and hard work can be replaced with bullsh!t and a sneer.

So the thousands of people dying right now after dutifully undergoing their 100% conventional cancer treatment…they volunteered as ‘Good Examples’ of self-responsibility, I suppose. Their ‘Good Example’ is certainly not being discussed–from this discussion, you’d think a cure for cancer was as easy as following doctors’ orders, when in fact cancer is the second leading cause of death. With any luck (from your perspective), their self-imposed crises will encourage others to blindly follow in their wake. Ching ching! $$$

Perhaps they should be thanked for giving a dose of reality to humanity, but I suspect their demise will be due mostly to the arrogance and hubris they got from the cancer industry, and people like you and the others in this den of vipers.

NWO Reporter, I’m writing this down not to convince you (you’re beyond convincing) but to point out to any lurkers the huge gaps in your argument.
Cassandra Callender was diagnosed with cancer at 17 and initially refused treatment. Because she was legally a minor she was forced to undergo treatment.
Her cancer went into remission.
When Callender reached 18, she refused to continue the treatment and was able to because she was no longer a minor.
Without treatment the cancer came back. Nine months later it was detected again.
Callender decided to use quackery to treat her cancer. The cancer spread further.
Callender now seems to have realised that she blundered badly by refusing treatment and embracing quackery, and is restarting chemotherapy.
You are insinuating that it was the chemotherapy that caused her cancer to return. It wasn’t. It was her not finishing her course of treatment that caused that.

“Her cancer went into remission. When Callender reached 18, she refused to continue the treatment and was able to because she was no longer a minor.” — As much as the vipers on this blog are fond of repeating this, I have yet to see a single piece of evidence to support the contention that after her cancer went into “remission,” any conventional treatment was recommended and refused. That is, until she underwent testing 9 months later (which indicates she was doing follow-up visits) and found she had more cancer. So either post the evidence it happened, or admit you are making it up to support your agenda.

While you’re at it, why don’t you explain why cancer is the second leading cause of death, if the conventional medical system is doing such a bang-up job. Maybe when you get it down to the 10th or 20th leading cause of death, people will be more inclined to believe you know what you’re doing.

It looks like cancer incidence rates per 100,000 have been falling on average 1.1% each year over the last decade. Death rates have been falling on average 1.5% each year. This hardly indicates any miraculous advances in treatment. Most of the declines in mortality are due to the decline in incidence.

You really ought to dig a little deeper. Incidence of some cancers has dropped substantially due to screening – colon cancer comes to mind. On the other end we have too many lung cancer deaths in females because of the uptake of smoking among females in the 70s and 80s.

There are similar stories on the treatment end with some – melanoma comes to mind – having rapidly increasing longevity owing to more effective treatments while others – pancreatic cancer, for instance – proving very difficult to crack.

Really, NWOR, if you clear your head of preconceptions and follow the evidence, you’ll find yourself in a very different spot from where you are today.

An interesting point of fact, just about every man in the world will eventually get colon cancer – it’s nearly inevitable.

Of course, in the old days (and even today), most men don’t actually reach the age at which the Colon Cancer would present itself. So, men die of many other things before they ever get to the Colon Cancer part.

“Her cancer went into remission. When Callender reached 18, she refused to continue the treatment and was able to because she was no longer a minor.” — As much as the vipers on this blog are fond of repeating this

Pretty ironic coming from a tapeworm.

I have yet to see a single piece of evidence to support the contention that after her cancer went into “remission,” any conventional treatment was recommended and refused. That is, until she underwent testing 9 months later (which indicates she was doing follow-up visits) and found she had more cancer.

Here is the timeline through April 1. She was released at the end of April.

By August 16 (not “nine months later,” BTW), her GoFundMe page had been revised to state that she was in “questionable remission” and would have another scan on September 1 to “determine if she is actually cancer free.”

It was not subsequently updated, but in her interview with Ty Bollinger,* that she had no intention of pursuing conventional treatment past her September 30 birthday.

She announced in mid-April of 2016 that she had a mass in her lung and had “known about this for a while, but it’s been hard going public with it.”**

Nowhere but nowhere can your fantasy version of events be unearthed here. In fact, I can’t even find any boundary that corresponds to your drearily intoned “nine months later.”

To paraphrase from (in my belief) the best TV show ever: Colonel Potter to Hawkeye: Rule 1 is young men die in war, Rule 2 Doctors cannot prevent Rule1.

In real life rule one people die (in the last 3 years I’ve come close with cancer and a heart attack. Rule 2 doctors can’t prevent rule 1 but they have gotten ever so much better at lowering the number of people who die.

More than likely as little as ten ago my heart would either outright killed me or left me in very poor condition. Even today less than 6 percent of people survive the type of heart attack I had. I am in an even lower percentage because I didn’t suffer any heart muscle damage.

Does anyone here know about intra arterial chemotherapy for DIPG? I’ve been following a local girl who is currently in Monterrey, Mexico receiving this treatment. I tried reading up on it, but I’m not a doctor. If anyone has a more informed opinion, I’d be interested to hear it.
Thanks!

For whatever reason-my comment posted before I was finished typing-I must have hit “submit comment” by accident. In any case, I was just going to also say that I would be extremely skeptical of anything run out of a clinic in Mexico-quacks oftentimes will set up bogus clinics in Mexico or elsewhere in Central America to evade FDA regulations.

And I didn’t see anything about trials of intra-arterial chemo for DIPG in Mexico-all I saw was the one clinical trial at Johns Hopkins.

@squirrelelite-While unfortunately the prognosis for some forms of cancer (e.g., pancreatic cancer) have not improved much in the last 20 years, the prognosis for others has improved significantly in just the last 5-7 years. I’m thinking in particular of metastatic melanoma-7 years ago, the only approved treatments were IL-2 (and the adverse effects of IL-2 are too severe for many patients to tolerate) and dacarbazine.

Today, some metastatic melanoma patients are attaining durable complete responses with immune checkpoint inhibitors (i.e., nivolumab and pembrolizumab). A few years ago, it was reported that 17% of metastatic melanoma patients were still alive at 7 years-and I imagine that the same results-or better-will be observed with nivolumab and pembrolizumab. 7 years ago, ipilimumab wasn’t even approved for the treatment of metastatic melanoma yet. Of course, the targeted drugs (e.g., vemurafenib, dabrafenib) have also been approved since then, but unfortunately resistance to those drugs usually develops, and they haven’t produced the same kinds of durable responses that the immune checkpoint inhibitors have (plus they only are effective for the subgroup of patients with the BRAF V600E mutation)

The prognosis for ALK mutation positive lung cancer has improved significantly in just the last 7 years, too. It was just announced at the ASCO conference that alectinib is significantly more effective than crizotinib in the treatment of ALK-positive NSCLC patients. Alectinib was more effective in treating brain mets and there were also fewer adverse effects in the alectinib treated patients than in crizotinib treated patients.

Of course, NWOR ignores all this, instead choosing to focus on the areas where there hasn’t been progress.

70 pages or so of cancer incidence and mortality going back about 80 years, and covering different types of cancers.

NWOReptile isn’t completely wrong. Year to year improvements aren’t big numbers, but they do look to be steady. 50 or 60 years of (more or less) 1.5% decline in cancer mortality would suit me just fine. If all of that decline was on the prevention side and not the treatment side, well, I’d be even more happy (I’m a great believer in preventive maintenance).

This document says on page 3 that 595,690 are expected to die of cancer in 2016. If 1.5% of their deaths can be prevented, that’s close to 9000 people. After a few years, that’s gonna add up. I dunno why NWOR wants these people to die, but I guess she has her reasons.

Maybe she knows of something out there that works better that real medicine, and thinks we should use that. All I can say is ‘bring your numbers’.

NWOReptile isn’t completely wrong. Year to year improvements aren’t big numbers, but they do look to be steady.

I’d say that when one mindlessly subtracts contemporaneous incidence rates from mortality rates, yes, one is completely wrong whether or not the result turns out to be in crude qualitative agreement with a rational analysis.

You know I don’t go for the endless wrangling with trolls, but I have to say the “viper” —>”tapeworm” one-liner was some A+ smack, and I chuckled out loud. That one goes in Narad’s Greatest Hits for sure. 🙂

While the Ninny Woo Order whines about limitations of “conventional cancer treatment”, there’s hope for significantly improving the chances of those with the type of tumor that killed Steve Jobs. We’re apparently on the threshold of approval of a targeted drug for neuroendocrine tumors. It involves attaching a radionuclide to an octreotide molecule that binds to tumor cells, so that a radiation dose much more directly hits those cells, largely sparing surrounding normal tissue.

It’ll be terrific when we can offer these patients an expanded arsenal of options against such tumors, as opposed to the juice fasts, colon cleansing, acupuncture and psychic interventions offered to Steve Jobs (and which may have shortened his life).

A Gazoogle check for “gofundme + Hope4Cancer” returns about 4200 Ghits. Which is an indication that the Hope4Cancer money-extraction machine provides its victims with advice on how to set up GoFundMe pages, thus turning them into franchises of the scamming. As is standard practice now in the Tijuana cancer-exploitation industry.

I struggle to come up with comparisons from parasitology that describe just how vile these humans are. Ghouls and leeches and vultures and vampire bats all have a valuable role in the eco-system.

Ty Bollinger did give $10K to Cassandra

He may or may not be receiving a kickback from the clinic for pimping them with such enthusiasm.

On Monday June 19 I got an infusion of ipilimumab which is an immunotherapy drug. 2 days later I got a series of 3 radiation treatments (21st thru 23rd). Dosage, 3 fractions of 9gy xrays from Varian Trilogy set at 9MV. These treatment we unusual in that instead of irradiating the whole tumor, I asked that they just burn a disk in the center of the main tumor leaving the rest of the tumor undamaged. This request was very counter intuitive in radiology because they are trained to kill every cancer cell they can possibly hit and it took a lot of work to get them to deliberately leave tumor undamaged.

But that was important because I was turning the tumor into a school, not a battlefield, where I was teaching my immune system what the cancer looked like (antigens) and classify it as an enemy. By using partial radiation I created an environment where white blood cells in my immune system could interact with dead cancer and learn it.

It is adenocarcinoma of the lung — supposed to be pretty devastating pretty quick. He claims that he is three months past his ‘sell by date’ and is still doing four miles of walking up and down a hill. He claims that he is not caughing up secretions anymore.

I’d say certainly not on the terms hypothesized, but then again, Orac is the oncologist. It seems to be based on the notion that ionizing radiation will somehow leave the “good parts” of the tumors. At the center. And as some sort of chemotactic road map.

It seems to be based on the notion that ionizing radiation will somehow leave the “good parts” of the tumors.

Hmm. I don’t see the leaving of the ‘good parts’ of the tumor there at all. He had immunotherapy then added the radiation to where the “good parts” are the dead parts so the components of his immune system got to learn of these *parts* — To me, it seems that many killed virus vaccines work on this same principle.

Are you saying that the ionizing radiation would mess up the ‘good parts’ so that they are so scrambled that the immune system has nothing pertinent there to recognize?

It’s more that I just don’t get what is being advanced. What’s supposed to happen? Radiotherapy is targeted because it kills cells, and part of this is scrambling the machinery, which is the whole problem in the first place. How is simply blasting the inside of a tumor* supposed to generate a useful immonuological response? Compare Herceptin, which has a specific mechanism.

2) Hasn’t Orac’s oncologist friend told us that tumors tend to die inside leaving live cells around the outside? This would seem to indicate that just poking a hole through the tumor mass wouldn’t kill much that wasn’t a;ready dead, anyway.

@ ORAC: “Unfortunately, the chemotherapy regimens for childhood leukemias and lymphomas are long for a reason. Oncologists don’t give up to two and a half years of chemotherapy because they like poisoning children. ”

What a load of disingenuous bovine scat!

1. The real motive is all the lovely MONEY that can be pounded from bones of the patient, his/her family (often bankrupted without mercy) and/or his/her insurance company (if the “mark” is lucky enough to have that, especially in the good old USA where the so-called “health-care industry”, more accurately described as The League of Extraordinary GREED™ and now they can really run riot because those of their mind-set are now infesting/infecting the White House and “own” both houses of Congress…shudder!).

2. What should also be considered is not only the “green” that can be “harvested” from the cancer therapy, but all the money that can be sucked up treating all the devastating complications of treating people with what are nothing more, nothing less that supremely/obscenely over-priced POISONS.

3. As a professional biochemist, who knows what’s involved in manufacturing these “medications” I can tell you right now there’s absolutely NO EXCUSE for what Big Pharma is reaming out of this unfortunate souls, as they literally and figurative “capitalize” on their fear of death >> I have NOTHING but contempt for these completely heartless profiteers (or should I say buccaneers!)

4. Now let’s have some numbers:
Out of the nearly $374 billion Americans spent on prescriptions in 2014, $32.6 billion – about 9 percent – was spent on oncology drugs, according to the annual report by IMS Health Informatics. Another $11.1 billion was spent on supportive care treatments, which help with the side effects of strong chemotherapy drugs.

Newly approved cancer drugs cost an average of $10,000 per month, with some therapies topping $30,000 per month, according to ASCO, which discussed the costs of cancer care at a recent meeting. Just a decade ago, the average cost per month of new drugs was about $4,500. Patients typically pay 20 to 30 percent out of pocket for drugs, so an average year’s worth of new drugs would cost $24,000 to $36,000 in addition to health insurance premiums.

4. Now there’s one other thing to consider in Cassandra’s case, namely that all the physical/psychological stress generated as the result of her being forcibly abducted (I know the goons who did it were “just following orders, eh?!) and then forced by that pack of sadists to undergo painful/disgusting therapy she never wanted may have been a factor in the failure of the “therapy”, IOW has anyone thought to consider that this kind of stress may actually have aided/abetted the survival of the cancer?

5. Then we have all the concern-pearl twisting over the fact that she fled into the waiting arms of the quacks…now, guys and dolls, why would you expect her to do anything else given the crime committed against by the state/the so-called” reputable medical community (yes, yes, I know those sadists who forcibly implanted the drug-port, infused her with grotesquely expensive poisons against her will were “just following orders”…I get it, really I do).

6. IOW, why would she EVER, EVER trust the any part of the “establishment” , what I’m going to call the “regular medical authorities”, who she probably views as nothing but a pack of heartless/egotistically arrogant (but WE know what’s best, submit or else!) torturers.

Finally i want to say that my real beef here is the fact that she was forced to submit to treatment against her will (she was plenty old enough to make this decision, i.e., she probably could have had an abortion at a much younger age with far less “oversight” and concern-pearl twisting over her “adulthood”, so why is this any different?).

Again, why would she NOT go to quacks given the way she’s been treated (I don’t ever see anyone of you goody-two-shoes medicos ever asking this question) and why did no one consider that the forcing someone to undergo treatment might generate physical/psychologial factors that would almost guarantee it would FAIL (slashed/poisoned this girl to no avail!).

Again, why would she NOT go to quacks given the way she’s been treated

She’s been treated to medicine (the stuff that works) by people who were and are working to save her life. Then she bailed and spent a lot of money, time, and effort on quackery from someone who only wanted her around so he could sell more quackery, and has abandoned her. She’s back with the people who may be able to undo the damage caused by time and quackery: it appears that the quackery has reduced her likelihood of survival from 85% to 40% or so.

(I don’t ever see anyone of you goody-two-shoes medicos ever asking this question)

Open your eyes. That discussion is ongoing here and elsewhere.

and why did no one consider that the forcing someone to undergo treatment might generate physical/psychologial factors that would almost guarantee it would FAIL (slashed/poisoned this girl to no avail!).

How would the handling of her case by the medical and legal communities “generate physical… factors” that would interfere with her treatment? These might be some psychological factors, but they would be minor in context.

@Se Habla Espol
“She’s been treated to medicine (the stuff that works) by people who were and are working to save her life.”

1. ROFL! She was FORCED to undergo horrific treatment against her will by a bunch of egotistical, sadistic PRATTS who when they look in a mirror probably see themselves as “superheros” swooping in to save her from herself (she’s NOTHING to them but the “mirror” before which they strut and preen in their I’m-too-wonderful-for-my-shirt fantasies, handsomely paided fantasies to the tune of slopping up nearly 18 cents out of every GNP dollar, the highest in the bloody world…sweet!)

2. What’s frightening to me is that you are obviously all on-board with having the long arm of government swooping in on a person’s life and taking away his/her right to make his/her own decisions under the pretext of “but it’s for your own good” and using the letter of Da Law that you’re aren’t an “adult”. Remember that she could have had an abortion at a much younger age with far less concern pearl twisting over her age…can you say hypocrisy/double-standards out the ying-yang, Se Habla Espol (SHE)?

3. Can you also say “slippery slope” here? IOW what’s to stop self-righteous jerks with egos that dwarf the Grand Canyon (I usually find they’re also under the delusion they have a mandate from their alleged God-s?) from eventually mobilizing the government to tell YOU/other “legal” adults they must undergo obscenely expensive/horrific treatment they don’t want using the “excuse”, but “it’s for your own good” (as we, the members of Legends-In-Our-Own-Minds League™, see it, we’re are saving your life we’ve ever so graciously deemed no longer belongs to you, aren’t we ever so wonderful!)

4. Now a reminder of this “treatment” that you are support with such enthusiasm:
A. Under cover of darkness Cassandra’s home was surrounded by multiple goon squads (why so many, one would think they were arresting a dangerous drug dealer/serial killer and yes, yes, I know they were “just following orders”) who then broke down her door dragged her off at gun point,like a criminal and then delivered to her torturers, again under cover of darkness (they also made sure she was “alone”, classic strategy employed by many sadists who, not surprisingly want no witnesses and who’s goal is complete subjugation of their target).

B. She was then assaulted by a pack of self-righteous medical goons (again, they were “just following orders”, with great enthusiasm) who held her down while she was forcibly anesthesized so they could cut her up/slamming in a drug-port to make easy for them “infuse” (nice euphemism for what’s nothing but a form of rape) to her repeatedly with drugs she never consented to.

C. IF she didn’t submit to their “kindness”, they threatened to starve her (the drugs would be given to her after she was forcibly sedated, sedation that would require she not have eaten before the “procedure” done for 5 days out of every 7, now that’s a horrific threat and nothing will ever make it anything else!).

D. She was isolated from all caring human contact (don’t count ANY of the “people” involved with her “treatement” as qualifying) >> no friends, her mother was only “allowed” to see her on rare occassions, under the strictest supervision for a very short time, she was locked in her room like a criminal and denied any contact with the outside world (no cell phone, no land line out).

E. I gather you would have no problem if you found YOURSELF in a similar situation forced upon you, amirite, SHE? (Spanish Inquisition eat your heart out!).

F. I must confess I have to fight back the wish that all who are so approving of the way this young lady was “treated” also find yourselves in the very same situation (have your personal sovereignty ripped from you as you are forced to have your body so rudely invaded day after day for months, all with the self-congratulatory, self-appointed/supremely self-righteous “authorities” who, of course, are “doing what’s best for you”), but I’m not a savage (wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy).

“Then she bailed and spent a lot of money, time, and effort on quackery from someone who only wanted her around so he could sell more quackery, and has abandoned her.”
1. Indeed, I agree, but you are running like a mad cow from the fact that the “approved” authorities did absolutely NOTHING to gain her trust, indeed they robbed her of her right to make her own decisions, her personal sovereignty to force treatment upon her.

2. And yes, I think that her personal sovereignty trumps all, even if her decision would endanger her life because who are YOU or anyone else to PRESUME that you/they have the “right” to invade her life, IOW who appointed YOU/them as the Final Arbiter(s?)™ of all that’s right/good…must have missed your coronation to such a lofty “post” (do you guys fight of who wears the “crown” or agree to parcel out the wearing of it?).

3. Again how would you like that done to you, but I usually find the squad cheer-leading what’s nothing but a crime against humanity IMO, are usually only into the “dishing end”, i.e., they’re dishing out their self-proclaimed “moral authority” to run rough-shod over the rights of others (strutting/preening in front of that old mirror as the Defender-of-Life Superhero, boy that superhero underwear must get raggity awfully fast!). Bet you’d fight like a tiger if you ever got on the “receiving end” (forced to do something that such an invasion of your person as this “therapy” is/was).

“She’s back with the people who may be able to undo the damage caused by time and quackery: it appears that the quackery has reduced her likelihood of survival from 85% to 40% or so”
What you keep AVOIDING is now this is her decision, freely given, and I’ve got no problem with that.

“How would the handling of her case by the medical and legal communities “generate physical… factors” that would interfere with her treatment? These might be some psychological factors, but they would be minor in context.”
“Minor”? Talk about head in the sand, read what she endured, there’s NOTHING “minor” about that or does being kidnapped and medically raped (a perfect word for what happened to her IMO, her body gruesomely and with great malice of forethought invaded with horrific/poisonous treatments she never consented to) really “ring your bell” (imagine yourself in her situation, if you’re actually capable of such empathy that is, something I very much doubt!).

Medicine doesn’t have to be pleasant to be good medicine. It does have to work to be good medicine, which is why medical scientists are constantly trying to come up with new treatments that work, and hopefully are better tolerated.

Medicine will ditch treatments that create more risks than benefits. Medicine will ditch treatments when something better comes along, or at the least relegate it to a minor or back up role.

Hence digoxin (derived from the foxglove plant) was a wonder drug when we figured out it reduced blood pressure, relieved edema from CHF, and improved certain cardiac arrhythmias. However, digoxin can be toxic, and has a very narrow therapeutic range. So blood levels have to be checked on a regular basis.

Since then, however, we’ve come up with much better drugs that don’t have the toxicity of dig, or the narrow therapeutic range (meaning the risk of under or overdosing the patient isn’t the huge problem it is with dig). So we use drugs like calcium channel blockers, beta blockers, and anti-arrythmics to treat CHF and Afib because they are much, much safer and generally more effective.

Every once in a while I still see someone on digoxin. Not like I used to, and it’s not the go to for Afib the way it was. Diltiazem and amiodarone have largely taken over that role.

I have never met anyone who’s Afib has resolved by drinking water that supposedly had some herb in it once upon a time.

I’ll agree that patients do have the right to refuse treatment. It doesn’t make them smart if their reasoning is to use quack treatments. In no universe is taking fake medicine on the advice of a scam artist like a naturopath smarter than taking real medicine from a physician.

“Under cover of darkness Cassandra’s home was surrounded by multiple goon squads (why so many, one would think they were arresting a dangerous drug dealer/serial killer and yes, yes, I know they were “just following orders”) who then broke down her door dragged her off at gun point,like a criminal and then delivered to her torturers, again under cover of darkness”

Is there evidence for this having occurred? It sounds like the standard bile-spewing paranoid ravings we hear from certain alties (i.e. the crowd at NN) whenever alt quacks and scam artists get busted for preying on marks.

1. Where did I said any such thing as the strawman you waling the living daylights of here (never promoted quackery, whose muck really shouldn’t be dignified with the term “medicine”, over standard medicine”, for lack of a better phrase) >> QUOTE ME!

2. As far as I’m concerned, quackery and standard medicine are just two sides of the same “coin”,i.e., the calculated exploitation of the pain, suffering and dying of other beings for obscene profit, profit and even MORE PROFIT >>> WHERE is the “justification” for the breath-takingly exorbitant costs of these poisonous drugs (they are poisons, let’s not try to gloss that FACT over, shall we), that one has to hope poisons the cancer before the poison takes out the some vital function(s, often destroys more than one) that will kill the patient just as dead as the cancer ever would?

3. Let’s not overlook all the additional cost of drugs/therapies developed in an attempt to counteract/ameliorate the awful side-effects that often make a person wish he/she was dead and/or abandon the treatment prematurely.

4. AGAIN, in the US is now close 18 cents out of every GNP dollar goes into, the pockets of the so-called “health-care industry”, the highest by far in the world.

C. Comparison of costs by country as percentage of GNP (US the highest in the world, over 17% in this Table, with the only good thing to be said is that costs are rising as FAST as they thought it would)http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.TOTL.ZS

D. Major Findings for National Health Expenditures: 2012-2022 (if you do the math, that means we’re heading for over 1/5 of the GNP going into “health care industry” pockets by 2023):
Health spending is projected to grow at an average rate of 5.8 percent from 2012-2022, 1.0 percentage point faster than expected average annual growth in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Man, I can see why so many students want to be doctors, “invest” in hospitals/clinics/drug development, it’s profits, profits and yet more profits.

QUESTION: So, tell me, Dangerous Bacon, WHY are this costs so bloody high? (I’m a biochemist so I know how these drugs are made/from what/how manufactured and there’s NO reason for the jaw-dropping cost to the customer, really not patients, but customers, but pure unadulterated GREED on the part of what’s nothing more than a monopoly, with all the attendant EVILS that come with it).
—–

6. IMO as long as doctors/hospitals/drug companies/other “health-care givers” can make such obscene profits by selling false hope (hey buddy, you don’t want to die to ya!…you’ve still got a “chance”….yeah, righttt!) to the dying, we will never have the right do for ourselves what we can now do for any suffering dog or cat (if I want to die rather than submit to therapy, WHY would any one stop me, oh, that’s right in their HUBRIS they’re going to “rescue me from myself”, “know what’s best”…gag-a-maggot arrogance)

7. Of course there’s always the cadre of self-appointed/anointed control-freaks who really get off on dictating to others how to live their lives which would necessarily includes when to die (as much a part of living as anything else) and often use their religious affiliation as an “excuse” for outrageously interfering in other people’s decisions (many of whom are also raking in all those profits by prolonging the DYING, calling it “prolonging life” to continue conning the mugs out of every last farthing).

8. My issue here is that Cassandra had your precious treatment FORCED upon her, something she was plenty old enough to refuse and IMO the fact that it was forced upon her is one reason why it failed. IOW do you really think that once she reach 18 she would just continue to submit to something she NEVER consented to, a thoroughly vicious, immoral act on the part of the state/disgustingly arrogant doctors, that I am convinced stampeded her into the arms of the quacks, just licking their chops to take her in

9. Those quacks simply capitalized on her now compounded, understandable lack of trust in the therapy that MIGHT have succeeded IF she had consented to it, but NO, her so-called “doctors” just had to throw their weight around, and enlist the all-too-willing jackboot of the state to stomp her down into therapy, a perfect example of this “joke” about doctors:

“What’s the difference between God and a doctor? Why God doesn’t think He’s a doctor!”

Mr. Varga’s ranting about “false hope” would resonate a little better if he wasn’t referring to Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

“The cure of Hodgkin lymphoma in the 20th century is another one of cancer’s biggest success stories. Breakthroughs in radiation therapy and chemotherapy paired with careful clinical research transformed an invariably fatal disorder into one that is routinely cured. The impact of this success story was, however, much greater because it created optimism for the treatment of cancer in general, and demonstrated the potential for a multidisciplinary approach to diagnosis and management. In the vanguard, Hodgkin lymphoma investigators conducted rigorous, randomized controlled clinical trials as a means to advance therapy. Another important lesson from the Hodgkin’s experience was the price of cure. The recognition of late adverse effects from radiation therapy and chemotherapy in the form of second cancers, heart and blood vessel disease, and sterility shaped subsequent research efforts to maintain or improve cure rates with fewer complications, an important goal in a disease that primarily affects individuals in their 20s and 30s. Today, as more than 80 percent of patients are cured after primary treatment, a major emphasis is now placed on survivorship.”

There was nothing vicious about making sure Cassandra Callendar got appropriate medical treatment when she was under age. There’s a reason why minors don’t have the full rights of adults: they lack the understanding and maturity to make adult decisions.

It’s neither vicious or cruel to put the health of a child before their wishes when their reasoning capacity is not fully formed.

It’s unfortunate she didn’t understand or appreciate the effort. But it wasn’t vicious. Her physicans did not do that to her for the sake of being cruel; they did it because they valued her life and thought it tragic she could kill herself through refusing treatment for a treatable disease.

The real villains here are the quacks who convinced her and her parents they could cure her cancer without chemotherapy.

Her parents failed her by not insisting on real medicine. They love her, but they failed her by enabling it.

The decision of those physicians to go through the courts was dicey on an ethical basis, for the reasons Orac himself notes in his article. I’m no more sure I could have gone down that road than he is, but her doctors were sure, and guess what? They were right!

I hope it’s not too late for her.

Now granted, we’ve got some real problems with the profit motive in our health care system/industry. However, you need to show that her physicians were motivated by a profit motive and not her best interests before you go around slamming anyone. That’s a pretty serious charge to bring and you need a little more than general disgust with health care overall to bring it.

“Medicine doesn’t have to be pleasant to be good medicine.”
WHERE did I ever say or even hint that only “pleasant medicine is good medicine” and by inference, that “unpleasant (LOL! at the understatement) medicine is bad medicine” (if I may interpret you)?

“It does have to work to be good medicine, which is why medical scientists are constantly trying to come up with new treatments that work, and hopefully are better tolerated.”
Why is it that the above reminds of this question from Buffy the Vampire Slayer,”does the word ‘duh’ mean anything to you?”

“Medicine will ditch treatments that create more risks than benefits. Medicine will ditch treatments when something better comes along, or at the least relegate it to a minor or back up role.”
1. “Creates more risks”? Ah yes, those awful PGUs (profit generating units) might sue, but that’s not very likely given that doctors have a “code of SILENCE” when it comes to outing bad medicine/bad practice by colleages/hospitals that would make any of Mafia don’s Wise Guys cry in his vino (see no evil, hear no evil, and above all speak no evil against what’s really a bad doctor/crap hospital).

2. IMO that decision to “ditch” often rests on how all those millions of lab rats…err “patients”, populating doctors’ offices/hospitals, “respond” to those treatments (especially true for all the plethora of psychoactive drugs)…I mean what better “laboratory” could be had and with those stupid “rats” not only none the wiser, but paying for “privilege” of being experimented on as well!)

“I’ll agree that patients do have the right to refuse treatment.”
1. How very magnimous of you!

2. The real truth is that many doctors rarely let patients “refuse” treatments with a very common form of retaliation being to throw them out as patients (HOW.DARE.YOU! question my pronouncements from on high! If you don’t do what I demand, when I demand it, how often I command it, then get thee gone to another doctor, you damned, filthy, disobedient gomer!)

3. I had a friend (call her “Lyra”) who refused to have a stereotactic breast biopsy when a mammogram showed microcalcifications, something NOT unexpected given her age, the FACT that she had had a small, benign tumor removed from a duct (the surgeon removed the ducts while he was “at it”) and also was one of those women who developed fluid-filled cysts that needed draining (leading to scarring, hence more microcalcifications, something very painful to her as her breast tissue was very refractory to the anesthetic given).

4. Now anyone who’s familiar with a stereotactic breast biopsy knows that the instrument used is reminiscent of an apple-corer on steroids (sinks it’s metal talons into a piece, twists/yanks it out, sucks it up, then resets and dives in for another piece, YIKES!) and that the “anesthesia” fails very often (horror stories all over the web about this humiliating procedure where one is required to lie on a table with the breast hanging through a hole for up to an hour or more, waiting for the machine to “calibrate”/waiting on his/her royal majesty, Herr/Frau Doktor, to waddle in and hope that the anesthesia works (cases where doctors keep on jabbing even if the patient is screaming in agony, plenty of stories on the web, but wait, they must all be lying drama-queens, right?).

6. The bottom-line is that Lyra received a blackmailing letter in the mail telling her she had 30 days to find another physician because of her “non-compliance” (hey, you didn’t been over and grab your ankles for the doc, baby, shame on you!), with her now erstwhile doctor graciously consenting to care for her if any emergency arose during that time. What’s revealing is that Frau Doktor was too much of a lily-livered COWARD to say this to Lyra’s face, in something that also included a very blatant attempt to blackmail the Lyra into undergoing “treatment” she didn’t want (the Frau Doktor also “graciously” said that if she had the biopsy within the 30-day period Lyra could remain her patient…Lyra very wisely went elsewhere and is very much alive, very well and still kicking butt, 7 years later).

7. Oh and data now shows that billions of dollars are WASTED on these biopsies/mammograms, but docs just keep on racking ’em up (cha-ching!, cha-ching! the wifey-poo needs a 100th pair of Gucci heels to go with her $30K Zuhair Murad frock!).

“Mr. Varga’s ranting about “false hope” would resonate a little better if he wasn’t referring to Hodgkin’s lymphoma.”
There you go again, misrepresenting what I said. AT NOT TIME did I say that the standard treatment for Hodgkin’s lymphoma was a “false hope” nor assert that it wasn’t the right treatment for her condition.

But all that is just a red herring you’re furiously slapping to desperately avoid the FACT that a young lady who just “shy” of a very artifical legal definition of adulthood, was FORCED against her will to undergo treatment (medical kidnapping and medical rape, nothing more, nothing less, all with the “blessing” of the state and many here…The Spanish inquistion using the “excuse” they were saving souls, but it was for their own good, engaged in similar barbarity).

Better hope no one decides you aren’t acting very “adult” and does the same to you, but hey you’re reached that magical artifical legal definition for an adult and are now soooooo safe from any such depredation of your bodily integrity/personal liberty, amirite, DB?

(snip blather about 80% success rate, so what, she didn’t want the treatment, her right, end of story).

“Is there any evidence quackery has even a .0000008% cure rate for Hodgkin’s (never mind greater than 80%)?”
The fact that quackery is just that is NOT an excuse for the predatory disregard for someone’s right to decide was does or does NOT happen to his/her body and I find the fact that so many here are soooo comfortable with this “excuse” as a “justification” for what happened to Cassandra to be quite terrifying (slippery slope, MUCH, where do we stop or does the “excuse” but “its for your own good” justify any violation of personal liberty? Who gets to make that decision, you, DB or you, Panacea and based on what?….do get over yourselves, hard to do with such egos that need to exercise their “muscles” by pushing others around, I do understand, really I do.)

Emilio Varga @189: Clearly you’re not familiar with the record keeping and testing requirements of FDA-approved medicine.
Also, clearly you are unfamiliar with the even more intense regulatory requirements for biologics.

Have you ever done GMP? Because if you talk about “costs” and only talk about the raw materials and not the clean rooms, the trained manufactures, the testing and validation involved in actual GMP, well then you don’t really know what you’re talking about.

Dangerous Bacon>>”Still waiting to see documentation of Varga’s claim of multiple “goon squads” spiriting Cassandra away at gunpoint in the dead of night for ghastly medical experiments.”

1. AGAIN you have this nasty habit of putting words in my mouth I never uttered >>>I NEVER said that Cassandra was subjected to “ghastly medical experiments” (QUOTE ME!).

2. The evidence is actually contained in her interview with that quack and every time I try posting it (with a link to source), it has gotten deleted, so I’m just going to try quoting from the interview and hope this THIRD posting is “permitted” (Bollinger’s a quack, we know it, so what is the moderator afraid of?):

“[W]hen she was alone in the house, Cassandra’s home was surrounded by a dozen of “Hartford’s finest” (police cars) and workers from the Connecticut Department of Children and Families (DCF). They banged on the doors and windows and terrorized the 17-year-old while she hid in a closet and cried.

Later that day, Cassandra was kidnapped by DCF workers and the police and was taken back to the hospital to begin chemotherapy. Amazingly, it took a dozen police cars surrounding her home to capture this “hardened criminal” named Cassandra (yes, sarcasm intended). I assume that there were no robberies or rapes that day in Hartford, as they had so many police cars available to surround the house. Or maybe there was a donut shop down the street…

Within a few days, Cassandra was back in the hospital and scheduled to begin forced chemotherapy. But even then she wasn’t ready to submit to this gunpoint medicine. It took no less than 12 workers to strap her wrists and ankles to the bed and control her while the nurse stuck a needle in her neck to sedate her. She woke up in the recovery room with a port in her chest. Had this horrific abuse taken place on the streets of Hartford, the assailants would have been guilty of assault and battery.

However, since these human rights violations occurred in the hospital, the assailants will never be charged with the crimes that they committed against Cassandra. In her own words,

“At that point, I didn’t feel like a human anymore… I feel like I’ve been violated… My ankles and wrists were bruised when I woke up.”
———
3. Now what I do expect is attacks on Cassandra from people like you and your fellow-travelers as per this from another “champion” of her being brutally cast down against her will into the Center-of-Hell that Medical Inferno aka The Connecticut Children’s Medical Center (hat-tip to Dante):

4. Furthermore, these personal attacks were coupled demands for video of her arrest, PLUS “at least 6 eyewitness accounts from her neighbors or no dice! >>> right, like she was going to be able to do that!).

5. So do I think you’re ever going to believe her account of what happened, no matter how reliable the source? NO!! it doesn’t “fit” your rosy picture of all those involved as God-sent Angels of Mercy with only her best interest at heart, with only the best of intentions (Someone once said that the “road to HELL was paved with Good Intentions” and this blatant, vicious, cruel violation of human rights is a perfect example!)

6. Do I think you would EVER, EVER believe it if Cassandra were her and told you face-to-face? NO! (she’s just lying drama queen to those on your side-of-the-fence, amirite, DB?)

My issue here is that Cassandra had your precious treatment FORCED upon her, something she was plenty old enough to refuse and IMO the fact that it was forced upon her is one reason why it failed.

Others have addressed your other points, but I’d like to take a shot at this one.

Cassandra was forcibly treated at 17, and, while I think it’s a darn shame that her parents weren’t smart enough to force her to take her medicine, leaving that job to others, you seem to be saying that at 17, she’s ‘old enough’ to make life changing medical decissions.

I disagree. There are many things adults can do that children cannot. Here’s a few things we don’t allow children to do, that adults are allowed to do (and many of them I have). I wonder, in addition to making life treating medical decisions, which you would also allow all 17 year olds the unrestricted ability to do –

Apply for and be given credit
Open bank accounts
Buy and consume alcohol
Buy and consume tobacco
Join the military
Buy and sell firearms
Have full, unrestricted, drivers license
Buy and sell motor vehicles
Buy and sell real estate
Get married
Adopt children
Vote
Run for office

If you would restrict all 17 year olds form doing anything on this list, could you explain why that thing requires a higher level of maturity than making life throwing medical decisions?

It take a lot for a physician to fire a patient. “Lyra” would have had to do a lot more than be non-compliant, so I call BS on this entire anecdotal story.

ROFL! I expected you to call me a liar, well actually you’re calling my good friend a liar, using the flimsiest of pretexts….

1. IOW, just because it may “take a lot”, a “quantity/quality” very, very conveniently undefined by you (define “a lot”) to “fire a patient” as you put it in your neck-of-woods, DOES NOT mean that your situation (“it takes a lot”, undefined?) is going to be the “standard” (whatever “a lot” means in Panacea-verse) everywhere else (really bad logic, but you have no case, so no surprise to see you fleeing running the Bad-Logic-Rabbit-Hole).

2. AGAIN, We don’t know what “it takes a lot” means, there now do we? However, I DO know what it took HERE and you’ve simply made a fallacious assumption that what may be true in your situation NECESSARILY must be typical of ALL other situations of the same type.

3. If ever there was a Herr/Frau Doktor’s idea patient it was DR. Lyra (Phd, theoretical physics) who obediently showed up for all exams, took her yearly flu shots without protest, i.e., the Doktor demanded it, she did it, something that makes a laughingstock of your childish attempt to insinuate that she must have been some a difficult patient (I almost expected this former West-Point graduate/veteran to SALUTE whenever she saw FRAU Doktor, guess this kind of willingness to take orders/ascent to authority was an outcome of her military training, for all the good it did her in this situation, apparently she was still was groveling in drooling, worshipful submission enough to suit Frau Doktor).

4. I’ve read what I’m going to call Lyra’s Frau Doktor letter which is very clear that IF she did NOT comply (woman, submit to that biopsy within 30 days) she would be “fired” (begone you, YOU, disobedient PGU!), but to quote from it Frau Doktor graciously said, “I will continue to care for you if an emergency should arise within said 30-day period”>> how very, very magnimous of that arrogant piece of blackkmailing trash (wouldn’t let Frau Doktor touch me with a 20 ft. barge-pole, shudder!)

5. What I also observe is that you’ve avoided like the plague the data from your own vaunted medical science authorities, which shows that my friend, who refused the biospy only because of her past experience with anesthetic failure (something Frau Doktor refused to even speak with her about before swing the Ban-Hammer) had excellent grounds to refuse a procedure that is very NOT warranted (as was the mammogram) but has also been shown grossly over-proscribed (to the tune of BILLIONS of dollars, but hey, that’s to point, ain’t it >>> cha-ching!, cha-ching! let those cash-registers ring!>> for sea, to shining sea!)

Panacea is 1M times smarter than me, so I’ll take the low hanging fruit:

1) Uh, makes no sense? Human behavior isn’t easily quantified, it’s one of the problems with us. Panacea never claimed it was standard and it was clearly based on her experiences.

2) What it took here is an N=1, which is what you JUST complained about in #1.

3) Thanks for the info – but since no one here has any proof (and you clearly lean toward, shall we say hyperbole), I’ll remain skeptical as well.

4) Great! Can you scan the photo, omitting personal details, and show it to us? Otherwise, see #3

5) WHAT DATA? How can she avoid data you never presented. Also, over-perscribed needs a citation and, oh look, another claim it’s all about money (and ignoring government overstate). I suggest people start referring to this gambit as the “purely for profit” fallacy – although I’m open to suggestions.

Emilio Varga: My issue here is that Cassandra had your precious treatment FORCED upon her, something she was plenty old enough to refuse and IMO the fact that it was forced upon her is one reason why it failed.

Others have addressed your other points, but I’d like to take a shot at this one.

Cassandra was forcibly treated at 17, and, while I think it’s a darn shame that her parents weren’t smart enough to force her to take her medicine, leaving that job to others, you seem to be saying that at 17, she’s ‘old enough’ to make life changing medical decissions.

First, just because her parent (just her mom) didn’t agree with the pronoucements of the recognized medical exstablishment doesn’t mean she was stupid (“not smart enough”? according to whom, YOU, the so-called medical establishment?…boy does your lot need a OverblownEgoectomy, but double quick!)

Second Cassandra was just shy of an ARTIFICiAL legal definition of adulthood, so are you really going to tell me that suddenly, in a few months, she would be magically be “transformed” (on the “threshold” of her 18th birthday) in a completely functional adult by the passage of this short period time…you’re really going to try and lay that laughable bunk on me, are you?

IOW, do you have any actual scientific data that would support a hypothesis claiming that unless one has reached a physical age of 18, he/she must necessarily be deficit in adequate decision-making skills PLUS you would need data showing that one breached that “barrier”, decision-making skills are most likely to be fully “up and running”….so where’s the “beef”, Johnny?

I disagree. There are many things adults can do that children cannot. Here’s a few things we don’t allow children to do, that adults are allowed to do (and many of them I have). I wonder, in addition to making life treating medical decisions, which you would also allow all 17 year olds the unrestricted ability to do –

Apply for and be given credit
Open bank accounts
Buy and consume alcohol
Buy and consume tobacco
Join the military
Buy and sell firearms
Have full, unrestricted, drivers license
Buy and sell motor vehicles
Buy and sell real estate
Get married
Adopt children
Vote
Run for office

What a load of red herring and a very disingenuous “dish” of it that it is, too (why)….

1. What you somehow failed to do is mention the fact that all of what are defined as adult responsibilites vary greatly in the age at which they are granted, time-frames that are often very individual state-by-state as well (timeframes vary from 18 to 21, depending on the activity and the state).

2. NONE of these involve consent to undergo a medical procedure, so let’s take an actually RELEVANT example, the ability to obtain an abortion and I going to use Conneticut’s laws only because it under Conneticut law she was deem to be incompetent (not an adult).

Sec. 19a-600. Definitions. For the purposes of sections 19a-601 and 19a-602:

(1) “Counselor” means: (A) A psychiatrist, (B) a psychologist licensed under chapter 383, (C) a clinical social worker licensed under chapter 383b, (D) a marital and family therapist licensed under chapter 383a, (E) an ordained member of the clergy, (F) a physician assistant licensed under section 20-12b, (G) a nurse-midwife licensed under chapter 377, (H) a certified guidance counselor, (I) a registered professional nurse licensed under chapter 378, or (J) a practical nurse licensed under chapter 378.

History: P.A. 95-116 changed reference to certified independent social workers to licensed clinical social workers and made a technical correction to refer to physician’s assistants as licensed rather than certified; P.A. 95-289 echoed technical changes in P.A. 95-116, changing “certified” to “licensed” in references to marriage and family therapists and physician assistants; P.A. 96-180 made a technical change in definition of “counselor”, substituting “marital” for “marriage” in “marital and family therapist”, effective June 3, 1996; P.A. 06-196 made a technical change in Subdiv. (1), effective June 7, 2006; P.A. 07-217 made a technical change in Subdiv. (1)(C), effective July 12, 2007.

Cited. 24 CA 541.
(Return to Chapter Table of Contents)
(Return to List of Chapters)
(Return to List of Titles)

Sec. 19a-601. Information and counseling for minors required. Medical emergency exception. (a) Prior to the performance of an abortion upon a minor, a physician or counselor shall provide pregnancy information and counseling in accordance with this section in a manner and language that will be understood by the minor. The physician or counselor shall:

(1) Explain that the information being given to the minor is being given objectively and is not intended to coerce, persuade or induce the minor to choose to have an abortion or to carry the pregnancy to term;

(2) Explain that the minor may withdraw a decision to have an abortion at any time before the abortion is performed or may reconsider a decision not to have an abortion at any time within the time period during which an abortion may legally be performed;

(if you want to read to whole thing, too long to post all here, please click on the link)

Well, well would you just look at that! >> A “minor” in this case is defined as someone less than SIXTEEN, so guess when it comes having an abortion, that “magic ticket” granting adulthood just plummetted, and here y’all are asserting that EIGHTEEN MUST inviolable “end all, be all” for granting “adulthood”….ooops!

POINT: So tell me, Johnny, WHY would Cassandra be allowed to have an ABORTION (something many regard as murder of another human being) at SIXTEEN, without parental notification/involvement of any kind AND with no involvement with the list of “counselors” required (only a “minor” must be counseled under Conneticut law) BUT when it come to her refusing chemo at SEVENTEEN PLUS, she’s suddenly completely bereft of the necessary mental judgement to make that decision?

OH wait it couldn’t be that the Herr/Frau Doktor saw their cash cow escaping and quite literally set the “dogs” (the long arm of Da Law, the bully-boy cops) on her to round her up and and drag her back so they could finish the “milking’, all while polishing their egos with grand delusions of “hero-hood” that THEY, the Great and Power Doktors, were saving her life….I’m mean absolute power slathered with money, it doesn’t get better than that, now does it?

“First, just because her parent (just her mom) didn’t agree with the pronoucements of the recognized medical exstablishment doesn’t mean she was stupid (“not smart enough”? according to whom, YOU, the so-called medical establishment?…boy does your lot need a OverblownEgoectomy, but double quick!)”

That’s a total misrepresentation of what was said, they said, “smart enough to convince their daughter” not smart enough to udnerstand the science. But while we’re here, “yes, you are stupid if you ignore the medical evidence (which you slur by calling the medical establishment)

“Second Cassandra was just shy of an ARTIFICiAL legal definition of adulthood, so are you really going to tell me that suddenly, in a few months, she would be magically be “transformed” (on the “threshold” of her 18th birthday) in a completely functional adult by the passage of this short period time…you’re really going to try and lay that laughable bunk on me, are you?”

that sounded to me like an artificial LEGAL definition. Some people can make sound decisions before then, some can’t make them after then. So the law picked a point.

No, Emilio, I’m calling YOU a liar, because I have no evidence this Lyra person actually exists.

But what would I know about physicians firing patients. I’ve only worked in health care for 32 years and taken care of the non-compliant patients who won’t quit smoking, won’t lose weight, won’t eat healthy, and constantly being readmitted under the same physician time after time.

If this person exists and she was fired, she did something more than refuse a biopsy. She made the doctor worry he would get sued.

But truth is, I really don’t think she exists. I think you’re making the whole thing up.

Most of my cousins are scientists/medical people of one kind or another; I’m fascinated with it, but just don’t comprehend it as intuitively as they do. (i’m more a man of letters, if anything).

To give you a chuckle, it reminds me of an EdX course I took on basic statistics. During one lecture, the professor said, “well, it’s obvious here that [blah, blah, blah].” I said to myself, “It wasn’t obvious to me!”

Now let me see what’s the word for someone who makes things up? Oh yeah, he/she’s a liar, so not only did you manage to contradict yourself, you most certainly did call me a liar, not once but twice (“making the whole thing up”, i.e., a liar by any other name is still a liar).

Oh and just what evidence would actually satisfy you that Dr. Lyra actually exists?

Why is it that I don’t think ANYTHING will because no matter what I posted (a photo, video, birth certificate, the letter “firing” her, what?) you could and I have absolutely no doubt would, hand-wave them away as frauds and keep on raising that old evidence bar to maintain your assertion that she doesn’t exist and was “fired” by her doctor for exactly the reason I related.

Furthermore, tell me why I should violate my friend’s confidence and privacy by posting such private, sensitive information on a potential dangerous place like the Internet in an attempt to satisfy demands that I’m confident are only going to escalate beyond all reason, so you can continue to pretend she’s doesn’t exist.

So NO I’m not about to gratify your overblown ego by dancing to your or your fawning lap-dog’s tune (you two really do need to get room, make it real!).

But what would I know about physicians firing patients. I’ve only worked in health care for 32 years and taken care of the non-compliant patients who won’t quit smoking, won’t lose weight, won’t eat healthy, and constantly being readmitted under the same physician time after time.

Until I get conclusive proof that what you’ve claim is true and clear (your job description/education, if any, where you’ve worked, photo, birth certificate etc., etc., and etc.), as far as I’m concerned you are simply “making the whole thing up”.

If this person exists and she was fired, she did something more than refuse a biopsy. She made the doctor worry he would get sued.

Now just how would a person you’re determined to believe doesn’t exist, do that? For that to occur, Doktor Blackmailer would have to have treated her for some condition and screwed that up, something NEVER alleged by me in the description of the case.

So do tell me, Panacea, just what would Dr. Lyra be suing Frau Doktor over? Come on, strut your alleged stuff (“only worked in health care for 32 years and taken care of the non-compliant patients”) and tell us just what Dr. Lyra could possibly be suing Frau Doktor Blackmailer about (did the doc screw up the mammography, what?, give us clue as to the basis for that alleged lawsuit?).

Nope, more obfuscation. (Philosophical debates on the nature and existence of reality aren’t needed here, just a few links and some photos).

“Oh yeah, he/she’s a liar, so not only did you manage to contradict yourself, you most certainly did call me a liar, not once but twice (“making the whole thing up”, i.e., a liar by any other name is still a liar).”

Either on purpose or accident, you omitted her “BECAUSE.”

“you could and I have absolutely no doubt would, hand-wave them away as frauds and keep on raising that old evidence bar to maintain your assertion that she doesn’t exist and was “fired” by her doctor for exactly the reason I related.”

Remember how you complained about Panacea’s judgment call based on her 32 years in medicine. You’re doing the same thing based on 2 days of internet comments.

CJTX: Don’t sell yourself short. Some of us just have to work harder at it. I had to work very hard to learn nursing; as much as I love science, it did not come naturally to me. I have to work at it. But once I know something, I KNOW IT.

Emilio, this is getting tiresome. You’re the kind of self righteous guy who talks for the sake of hearing his own voice. You’re hear because you want to say to yourself, “Yeah, I got them with that one!” never realizing that no, you aren’t doing anything more than making yourself look like an emotionally driven fanatic.

I’ve got science on my side. You have opinion. It’s really no contest.

Since Emile Varga / Miles Vega is making up identities on the spur of the moment, we can safely assume that the other astronomical name “Dr Lyra” is a fabrication as well.
I eagerly await further anecdotes about Mr Rigel and little baby Betelgeuse O’Ryan.

Chris
Mr. Varga: “Oh and just what evidence would actually satisfy you that Dr. Lyra actually exists?”

PubMed case report link… or in the fact of her actual existence, just a local news report of her plight.

“Pubmed case report link”? Why on earth would there be a report of her case there?

I’m mystified as to why a doctor rejecting a patient, (she’s only one of hundreds of thousands in this particular major US city) become “grist” for a report in a scientific database? (no harm to her, just an inconvenience, with this cavalier, high-handed rejection most certainly disabusing her of all of her illusions about the vaunted magnanimity of doctors)

IOW, in newsland parlance since her story “doesn’t bleed” so it’s damned sure not ever going to “lead”, meaning it won’t become the topic of any news story/journal article.

Furthermore, EVEN IF there were one, why would I post something containing information that would make it a slam-dunk for any predator to target her and/or steal her identity, i.e., satisfying the outstandingly ill-bred/bad-faith curiosity of you/your fellow-travelers (raised in barns were you?) is soooo NOT worth that risk to a dear friend.

“Just a local news report”? WHY would a doctor rejecting a patient end up in the local newspaper (slow newsday, MUCH!), especially in a major Us city with quite a few “local papers”?

Her case was NOT “fodder” for a story since the result of this “firing” only meant that Dr. Lyra had to find another doctor, which was not a problem since she was and is very fit and healthy, very low risk, only taking her 48 hours to find one, especially in a major city of this size (lots of doctors here on the “care-for-profit” gravy-train only too willing to accept a usually compliant patient with and good health insurance plan).

And NO, I’m not going to reveal her hometown to what is IMO a pack of egotistical nosy-parkers who for some strange reason seem to be under the delusion that their disgustingly ill-bred/bad-faith curiosity should be satisfied at all costs, regardless of the risk to my friend (oh and let me mention again that I’m under no illusions that your “request” for “proof” is made in “good faith” >> you have no intention of believing me, no matter what, no way, no how!).

In case, the lot of you STILL haven’t “gotten it”, I’m not risking having her identity becoming known, especially since I am completely convinced that anything I might post as “proof” would be rejected (that old “Evidence-Bar” will be jet-propelled to the Oort Cloud and beyond!) because it’s very obvious all of your kind don’t want to believe cases like hers exist and have already decided she doesn’t, no matter what, because it doesn’t validate your image of doctors as pure-of-heart, always-caring Angels-of-Mercy/Infallible Fonts of All-Wisdom-Knowledge.

Just curious: is the name “Varga” Hispanic or Hungarian? Because I did mistake a Hungarian Varga for the former. Or did you just make it up?

More ill-bred curiosity, i.e., why it this your business, how is it relevant to what is IMO, the vicious, premediatated gang-raping of Cassandra’s right to physical/personal autonomy? (gleefully supported by so many, gag-a maggot!)

Wow, yet another “dish” of ill-bred/no class curiosity on your part. Do tell me why I should be under any obligation to answer such questions for someone with posts whose “caliber” is exemplified by the following:

EXHIBIT A

Chris
June 6, 2017

NWO Troll, why should we care about your uneducated opinion? You are just noise in the ether.

Tell me why I should answer the questions from someone who posts consists ONLY of example of ill-bred/bad faith curiosity (evidence above), hurling grade-school insults and a lame attempt at ridicule (lathered with copious hypocrisy as exemplified by all the pearl-twisting over insults, changing the topic,etc.), all IRRELEVANT to the actual topic of this thread (is there an actual argument for or against the decision to force chemo on Cassandra, anything of value at all?)

“Tell me why I should answer the questions from someone who posts consists ONLY of example of ill-bred/bad faith curiosity (evidence above), hurling grade-school insults and a lame attempt at ridicule (lathered with copious hypocrisy as exemplified by all the pearl-twisting over insults, changing the topic,etc.), all IRRELEVANT to the actual topic of this thread (is there an actual argument for or against the decision to force chemo on Cassandra, anything of value at all?)”

JustaTec:Emilio Varga @189: Clearly you’re not familiar with the record keeping and testing requirements of FDA-approved medicine.

Glaring by it ABSENCE is evidence from my post (link given for your convenience) substantiating your characterization (do realize that your no-evidence “say so” DOES NOT “make it so”).

Also, clearly you are unfamiliar with the even more intense regulatory requirements for biologics.

Again we’re treated to your no-evidence “say-so”, so what!

Have you ever done GMP? Because if you talk about “costs” and only talk about the raw materials and not the clean rooms, the trained manufactures, the testing and validation involved in actual GMP, well then you don’t really know what you’re talking about.

IOW how does any of the above even come close to justifying the predatory, exorbitant costs of the chemotherapy drugs, JustaTec?

Let’s see some actual numbers eccruing from these things that would actually show that the costs are warranted, otherwise, I’ve got absolutely no compunction in thinking that the ONLY “justification” for this astronomically high cost is to feed the equally astronomically obscene, predatory GREED of the owners/shareholders of the companies that manufacture them (CEOs large and in charge of The League of EXTRAORDINARY Greed™).

Now let’s have some MORE evidence that these cost are NOT warranted and that “Big Pharma” long ago abandoned doing any real science, parasitizing innovative research products/result of scientists, funded by NIH grants and from small biotech companies, in addition to sucking up tax-payer money:

The taxpayer not only shells out at the pharmacy but often plays a critical role in funding these drugs in the first place. In other words, the public pays twice.

Although the pharmaceutical industry justifies routine overcharging by pointing to the huge, and uncertain, costs of research, the truth is that the government historically took, and continues to take, the greatest risks.

Since the 1930s, the National Institutes of Health has invested close to $900 billion in the basic and applied research that formed both the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors, with private companies only getting seriously into the biotech game in the 1980s.

Big Pharma, while of course contributing to innovation, has increasingly decommitted itself from the high-risk side of research and development, often letting small biotech companies and the NIH do most of the hard work. Indeed, roughly 75% of so-called new molecular entities with priority rating (the most innovative drugs) trace their existence to NIH funding, while companies spend more on “me too” drugs (slight variations of existing ones.)

But if Big Pharma is not committed to research, what is it doing? First, it is well known that Big Pharma spends more on marketing than on R&D. Less well known is how much it also spends on making its shareholders rich. Pharmaceutical companies, which have become increasingly “financialized,” distribute profits to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks designed to boost stock prices and executive pay.

Take Pfizer. Economist William Lazonick has shown that from 2003 to 2012, it spent $59 billion on share buybacks and $63 billion on dividend payouts — for a total payout to shareholders of 146% of net income. All the while, Pfizer benefited immensely from U.S. government spending on life sciences research and drug development.

Rather than making patient, long-term investments, large shareholders in Big Pharma companies are looking for a quick, easy, guaranteed return.

As evidence that Big Pharma is spending less on research becomes irrefutable, the pharmaceutical industry has used other excuses to support high prices. It has, for instance, argued that prices are proportionate to the intrinsic value of the drugs.

“Price is the wrong discussion,” Gilead Sciences’ executive vice president, Gregg Alton, declared in response to criticism over the price of Sovaldi. “Value should be the subject.”

However, studies looking at cancer treatments have shown no correlation between the price of cancer drugs and the benefits they provide. Peter Bach, a renowned oncologist, has found that, for most drugs, a value-based cost is actually lower than the current market-based price.

This state of affairs is not simply a huge failure of the so-called free-market; it is a long con. The supposed partnership between public and private sectors is increasingly parasitic, hurting innovation and fueling inequality through reduced investment, exorbitant prices for consumers and more money siphoned off for shareholders.

So let’s see those numbers, JustaTec, that would even come close to “justifying” the $10,000 cost/per month (average chemo-drug cost) for a course of treatments that may last for YEARS (example would be the chemotherapy for Hodgkin’s lymphoma described in Orac’s article here). Also remember than insurance companies DO NOT cover all the costs, so the patient will end up being the “debt slave” of the doctor/hospital until or EVEN IF he/she can pay off the staggering debt (of course, the therapy, depending on the cancer, may not work and the patient dies anyway with an outstanding debt that’s usually passed on to their survivors who will be mercilessly pursued for payment as the “health-care givers” help themselves to every last penny they can wringe for the grief-stricken survivors).

Emilio, this is getting tiresome. You’re the kind of self righteous guy who talks for the sake of hearing his own voice. You’re hear because you want to say to yourself, “Yeah, I got them with that one!” never realizing that no, you aren’t doing anything more than making yourself look like an emotionally driven fanatic.

2. Not a surprise given the gobsmackingly obvious FACT that so many here seem to so very much in love with themselves, as evidenced their PRESUMPTION that their assessment of a situation is so correct, so on-the-side-of-the-angels that ENTITLES them to either be part of and/or cheerlead the FORCIBLE abduction and FORCIBLE medical “treatment” of a young girl on the laughably transparent FICTION that she wasn’t old enough to have the requisite mental skills to decide for herself what medical treatments she will or will not undergo, now that really really takes an ego makes the Grand Canyon look like a rocky puddle >>>> Narcissus, eat your heart out!

A. First, let’s remember that in the state of Connecticut she could have obtained an ABORTION WITHOUT parental involvement/notification and WITHOUT professional counseling since according this law, she was NOT a minor, with “minor” defined as someone less than 16 years old. The EVIDENCE for what I’ve said above can be found HERE in detail in Post #207 to Johnny.

B. QUERY >> So IF she deemed competent to obtain an abortion at SIXTEEN (absolutely no oversight from anyone required in Connecticut if one is 16 or older), then show me the “science” that would make EIGHTEEN a requirement for being able to make a decision on whether or not to undergo a chemotherapy?

C. Now since you’re asserting you have the “science” do give us the empirical evidence that would support the designation of EIGHTEEN YEARS as the inviolable LIMIT defining the acquisition of a fully developed decision-making capacity , IOW:

—WHERE is your data documenting the failure/flaws/success in decision-making by those at SEVENTEEN versus the track record of failure/flaws/success in decision-making by EIGHTEEN year-olds? (choosing these limits because of this situation, Cassandra 17 ruled incompetent vs Cassandra 18 = fully competent decision-making adult)

—If one can’t show there’s any significant difference in the decision-making skills between these two age groups then that simply guts the use of this age-limit by you, the court, the doctors in denying her the right to make that decision for herself.

—WITHOUT any data to support the position that turning 18 is a reliable “benchmark” as to whether or not someone can make a valid/correct decision, then we’re really down to the FACT that what really happened was that a pack of disgustingly arrogant STRANGERS arbitrarily appointed themselves as the ABSOLUTE Arbiters of the “proper” course to take and used the court system to force their will on an unwilling patient.

POINT: It doesn’t get more frightening that, folks and I’d bet the farm that if someone arbitrarily took any of you fine, upstanding “cheerleaders” to court, stripped you of your right to decide whether or not YOU would undergo this or that medical procedure, you’d fight like tigers to stop that (it’d be Hell NO, I won’t GO!)

BOTTOM-LINE
It looks like the ONE, the ONLY criterion for determining her competence in this instance was whether or not her decision goose-stepped to that of her doctors/the medical establishment, who were simply slobbering at the bit to continue treating her, even if that meant forcibly abducting her/forcibly implanting a drug-port (for their convenience) and then FORCIBLY infusing grotesquely over-priced poisonous drugs into her (under threat of starvation/further isolation) against her will.

I guess the opportunity stroke those gigantic egos by playing The HERO™ (buttt, but we’re saving her life…admire us, we sure as HELL do!) at her expense was just too, too tempting!

“So do I think you’re ever going to believe her account of what happened, no matter how reliable the source? NO!!”

Given Ty Bollinger’s grotesque unreliability when it comes to cancer treatment, any accounts of Cassandra’s “medical kidnapping” appearing on his website are extremely dubious as well.

1. Right on cue and as I expected, you rejected the account based solely on its origin, but unfortunately for you what’s there as well is the VIDEO of Cassandra saying what’s in the synopsis or are you going to proclaim the VIDEO account (Cassandra, “in the electronic flesh” so to speak) “unreliable” because of where it’s posted >>> Can you say “genetic fallacy”, DB?

2. One other thing, IF Bollinger or anyone else issued a FALSE account of how she was treated by the Hartford cops/DCF goons, Cassandra herself would most likely have protested such a falsehood (of course one could always fallback on just asserting that she was nothing but an “attention-whoring drama queen jonesing for sympathy”, so, of course, she’d never do the right thing and protest the false account, eh, DB).

3. Furthermore, what we DO NOT have is any DENIAL by the Hartford authorities (the police/DCF) of Cassandra’s account (WHY!) that she was apprehended using a show of force (12 cars full of cops/DCF goons) usually reserved for extremely dangerous criminals — IF her account was false, then why haven’t the Hartford authorities issued a DENIAL and set the record straight, DB? (now if someone finds such a denial, please post it).

4. IOW, if I were the police chief I certainly wouldn’t want people to think my officers were such bullies, using this kind of force to arrest a sick, unarmed, alone, 16 year old girl (not a public image I’d want for my department, but that’s just me I guess).

It may sound like a drug raid, or the climax of a movie. But in fact, the police, along with representatives of Connecticut’s Department of Children and Families, had come to take the girl for chemotherapy.
[….]
About a week after running away, Cassandra came home. In her essay, she wrote that she had returned because she was afraid her disappearance might land her mother in jail. In December, she was hospitalized.

“I was strapped to a bed by my wrists and ankles and sedated,” she wrote in the essay, which was accompanied by a photo of her in the hospital. “I woke up in the recovery room with a port surgically placed in my chest. I was outraged and felt completely violated.”

“How long is a person actually supposed to live, and why?” she wrote. “I care about the quality of my life, not just the quantity.”

I can’t wait to see what excuse you have for pooh-poohing this source/her account.

Strangely (but not surprisingly) there is nothing in the N.Y. Times story supporting Vargas’ claim that a dozen police cars surrounded Cassandra’s house, or that “multiple goon squads” “broke down her door dragged her off at gun point,like a criminal and then delivered to her torturers, again under cover of darkness”.

The Times story is a sober and balanced account of the issues involved. You could learn from their example.

As for stress impeding successful treatment, it must be highly stressful for patients to hear loons ranting and slavering about “medical rape”, “torturers”, etc.

It is “Varga.” There is no “s”. Due to an in-law I have learned it is actually a Hungarian name. Though I would not be surprised if it was used in Spanish countries. Spain was part of the Hungarian/Austrian Empire for quite a while:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Habsburg

A reminder that it is standard practice for altie news outlets to claim that the infrequent sanctions/arrests that target quackery and assorted other consumer threats are carried out by “goon squads”, SWAT teams, military raids and so on. Just relating that a couple enforcement officers conducted a search, served papers or made an arrest doesn’t sound as chilling.

Example from NutcakeNews:

“The federal government is becoming increasingly militarized, with numerous agencies now employing their own SWAT teams to conduct raids on raw milk producers, beekeepers, lemon growers – or anyone else who runs afoul of agency policies.”

Given the level of craziness these “news” outlets encourage, I wouldn’t blame the USDA if they took such precautions as carrying sidearms and wearing bulletproof vests.

“and is unfortunate enough to have a parent who either . . . lacks the guts to tell the child that he’s getting treated for his own good and he doesn’t have a choice in the matter,” This “for your own good” crap in the article disgusted me! This article author didn’t even mention that Cassandra was OK with dying! What if the kid knows that it’s best for him/her but doesn’t want it even though it’s best for him/her? Also, what is in a person’s best interest physically is not always the same as what is in a person’s best interest emotionally. If I were blinded in one eye in an accident as a kid and had the eye surgically removed against my wishes, physically I would avoid going blind in the other eye, but emotionally I would be unable to accept myself, engage in self-loathing for having a glass eye, and live the rest of my life in resentment. If the doctor respected my wishes, however, physically I would eventually go blind in the good eye from sympathetic ophthalmia, but emotionally I would calmly accept myself, knowing I still had both my eyeballs in their sockets. And right there is a flaw with the “But being a minor is only temporary argument!” too: even after I turned 18, 21, 25, 30, 50, 75, or even 100, I could never get that other eyeball (albeit a blind one) back.

@James Landau: it’s too bad that you think that people go through life filled with self-loathing for having a glass eye and being able to at least see out of one eye. Perhaps some do. But then, how many go through life filled with self-loathing because they *didn’t* have the eye removed and are now blind? Personally, I’d take the glass eye – or an eye patch – over being blind. Because knowing I took every chance to save my sight, my life, whatever, makes me feel better about myself, rather than filling myself with loathing. I don’t loathe myself.

Real life got in the way for a while, but thank you CJTX for having my back at #208.

Emilio seems to be suggesting that because it’s legal for Cassandra to have an abortion at her age that she should be able to make all her own medical decisions.

I would note that while ‘many regard (it) as murder of another human being’, for the most part it is relatively safe for the patient, and, like all the items I listed, seldom lead to death. Still, I’m glad that we restrict children from engaging in those activities, including deciding to skip life saving medical treatments.

We know what happens to people with untreated lymphoma – they die, and they die ugly, and they do it nearly 100% of the time. Treatment may not be fun, but according to our host, it works 85% of the time.

Emilio seems happy with ‘let them die’. If there is a h3ll, there is a special place reserved for him.

And, yes, also Cassandra’s parents, as well as Starchild’s. All the parents who want to be a friend first and parent second, and let kids skip their medicine because they don’t like it, are all guilty in my eyes.

First, let me say that since I’ve been called all kinds of names and now even have had someone fantasize about my being tortured eternally is his idea of Hell (evidence below), I can and will now certainly respond “in kind”….

Johnny: August 21, 2017

Real life got in the way for a while, but thank you CJTX for having my back at #208.

Emilio seems to be suggesting that because it’s legal for Cassandra to have an abortion at her age that she should be able to make all her own medical decisions.

I would note that while ‘many regard (it) as murder of another human being’, for the most part it is relatively safe for the patient, and, like all the items I listed, seldom lead to death. Still, I’m glad that we restrict children from engaging in those activities, including deciding to skip life saving medical treatments.

1. Cassandra was NOT a child, though it’s glaringly obvious that your kind desperately need it be so, otherwise the lot of you just might have to deal with the FACT that you/your fellow-travelers are here cheerleading a CRIME (kidnapping and assault with intent, just for starters).

2. You and the rest of the “cheer-leading squad” are simply desperate to ignore the fact that the state would allow her to make medical decisions that include having an abortion at a much younger age (in her case she could have walked in to a clinic, gotten one with no parental involvement and no nanny-state breathing down her neck, as a “minor” in this case is someone less than 16 with Cassandra being over 17).

3. It looks like the state is quite inconsistent as to when someone is classified as a “minor” and when he/she is “adult” and those arrogant, egotistical doctors callously used that “inconsistency” to FORCE someone who just a few months short of what I’m going to call “the other magic boundary” defining adulthood to force THEIR WILL on an unwilling patient.

4. IOW these unbelieveably arrogant control-freaks (aka her “doctors”) didn’t gave a rat’s patootie for her as a human being with any right to self-determination, their egotistical WILL trumped all and they simply used the power of the state to enforce it, more shame to them, but neither them nor the state officials seem “afflicted” with conscience, hence, no sense of shame at ordering nothing but a criminal assault (just for starters!) on another human being.

We know what happens to people with untreated lymphoma – they die, and they die ugly, and they do it nearly 100% of the time. Treatment may not be fun, but according to our host, it works 85% of the time.

Emilio seems happy with ‘let them die’. If there is a h3ll, there is a special place reserved for him.

ROFL!
5. “We”? who’s this “we” and who are “they” such that “they” have become so “entitled” to trample all over someone else’s rights?

6. But the “we” are simply egotistical nannies who get off on controlling others, deluding themselve that because it’s for their target’s “own good” with their wishes (they’re always RIGHT!) abrogating the personal autonomy of the target their sucking their “control-freak fix” from (and they can pretend they’re so holy and righteous because they’re “saving her from herself”, sucking up a I’m-A-Superhero fix, in the bargain, truly intoxicating stuff this!).

7. But you don’t really have any “justification” other that it’s all about what YOU want, what YOU think is right and what YOU want done, so it doesn’t surprise me at all that you would sink to accusing me of “being happy to let them die” >> QUOTE ME where I ever said or came within a light-year of implying.

And, yes, also Cassandra’s parents, as well as Starchild’s. All the parents who want to be a friend first and parent second, and let kids skip their medicine because they don’t like it, are all guilty in my eyes.

And who are YOU, again, that these people you’re dumping on should care what YOU think?

Oh, I forgot, you seem to know what “God(-s? humans have invents so many such “Authorities” to justity/excuse their evil) would do”, so did He tell you that they were the scum that you must obviously feel oh-so superior to, otherwise, what’s your “basis” for sitting in judgement?

Dangerous Bacon, August 19, 2017
Strangely (but not surprisingly) there is nothing in the N.Y. Times story supporting Vargas’ claim that a dozen police cars surrounded Cassandra’s house, or that “multiple goon squads” “broke down her door dragged her off at gun point,like a criminal and then delivered to her torturers, again under cover of darkness”.

1. Cassandra’s account, but as it’s in her interview video with Bollinger, you deliberately ignore that and then you say the following:

The Times story is a sober and balanced account of the issues involved. You could learn from their example.

2. YET here you bleat:

As for stress impeding successful treatment, it must be highly stressful for patients to hear loons ranting and slavering about “medical rape”, “torturers”, etc.

3. I guess that this is your idea of a “sober and balanced” response to someone not agreeing with you, in addition to falsely attributing to me words/positions I never made as documented HERE in Post #188 and HERE in Post #200 (this is NOT a comprehensive list).

4. Considering the above, I have to ask, DB, does the word “hypocritie” mean anything to you?

5. Now as for describing her treatment as medical rape, let’s have Cassandra’s own words (funny, how you just keep right on ignoring the victim, you know the one you’re all here, wringing the living daylight out of your “concern” pearls over), in light of the FACT that it took 12 workers (oh wait, she didn’t video it, take name badges, so she’s a liar, eh, DB?) to strap her down and shove a needle in her neck to sedate her so they could slice her open and implant the for-their-convenience drug port (now the above sounds like scenario right out of Marquis de Sade), so let’s have Cassandra’s (remember her?) reaction, shall we:

“At that point, I didn’t feel like a human anymore… I feel like I’ve been violated… My ankles and wrists were bruised when I woke up.”

6. “I felt like I’ve been violated”..now the verb “violated” PLUS the sadistic scene of strapping her down/stabbing her with a needle, slicing her up, gosh, that kind of FORCIBLE RESTRAINT is typical of rape, especially coupled with the FORCIBLE INSERTION of foreign objects into her body against her WILL, now sure sounds like RAPE to me and she obviously thinks so, as per being “violated” and no longer “feeling human”.

7. But wait when her “captors” shot her up with poisons through the foreign object forcibly inserted into her body, maybe she should have just closed her eyes, laid back and thought of England, eh?

Then there are practical matters. Let’s go back to a post I wrote about a similar case of a chemotherapy “refusenik,” in which I noted that, while it may be possible to physically restrain a teen in order to place permanent intravenous access and then, every so often, to give her chemotherapy, it would be very difficult, and there would be nothing to stop her from trying to rip the intravenous access out to prevent further doses, potentially hurting herself, unless she were kept under constant surveillance and possibly even put under anesthesia for her chemotherapy dose. In other words, she would in essence need to be imprisoned for therapy. Then there was the issue of radiation therapy, which requires the cooperation of the patient, who must lie still on the table and do so every day for 30-40 days, depending on the radiation therapy regimen. Sure, Cassandra could have been sedated for each session, but there’s nothing good about sedating someone five days a week for six weeks or so. As I pointed out before, oncologists have a real problem doing this, and for good reason.

In any case, part of the above was basically what happened to Cassandra, although fortunately anesthesia wasn’t necessary except for her port placement, for which a combination of local and IV sedation are routinely used. She was locked away in a hospital and is not allowed to see her mother more than once a week, and then only under supervision. DCF took away her cell phone, and the hospital removed her room’s land line. Fortunately, she was cooperative, but imagine if she hadn’t been.

9. Shudder! Yes, just “imagine” IF she hadn’t SUBMITTED, what would have been done to her and how would any of your kind like the above done to you against YOUR will or hasn’t that occurred to any of you here (oooppps! my bad! I keep for getting self-entitled, purse-lipped control-freaks always, ALWAYS plan on being on the “dishing end”).

10. Oh and I don’t for a red-hot nanosecond believe that the relief expressed at her sumbitting is anything but a sigh of relief that a martyr wasn’t created as a consequence of her injury and/or death that most probably would have happened if she had resisted.

11. Just imagine how the Woo-Meisters could and would have “spun” that, talk about a PR nightmare for the traditional medical establishment! (sigh of relief that such a”quack-spoitation” opportunity did not occur, no concern at all for the girl herself as far as I’m concerned).

Varga is confusing disgust with his bizarre rhetoric and unsupported claims, with agreement that 17-year-olds should be compelled to undergo cancer therapy against their wishes. There are few if any here who’d endorse that position without qualification.

Given his evident lack of knowledge about cancer treatment, he exhibits the classic triad of fervent wooism: ignorance, confusion and belligerence.

Varga is confusing disgust with his bizarre rhetoric and unsupported claims, with agreement that 17-year-olds should be compelled to undergo cancer therapy against their wishes.

1. “Bizarre rhetoric”? “Unsupported claims”? Absent are any examples that you show to be either “bizarre” or “disgusting” (did remember that disagreeing with you doesn’t rank as evidence warranting your characterization).

2. I don’t see ANY disagreement with forcing this treatment on Cassandra, something doomed to failure from the get-go (will give reasons why later).

There are few if any here who’d endorse that position without qualification.

1. What “qualifications” and should you actually deign to list these “qualifications,” so what?

2. She was still was subjected to treatment against her will (“I fell VIOLATED”…”did not fell human”) so whatever those “qualifications” were, they look suspiciously like rationalizations people make in order to silence any possible pange of conscience or personal queasiness when facing what they would never, ever permit to happen to them (“I have reservations, BUT , , yadah, yadah”)

Given his evident lack of knowledge about cancer treatment, he exhibits the classic triad of fervent wooism: ignorance, confusion and belligerence.
1. Glaring by its complete ABSENCE is any example where you actually show this “evident lack of knowledge about cancer treatement” (if such a “lack” is “evident”, you should have no problem coming up with an example).

2. At NO TIME have I ever once said standare cancer treatments didn’t work, realizing that “working” here actually means the cancer is eradicated before those powerful poisons take down one or more vital functions that will kill the patient just as dead (there’s no escape from this for you).

3. Unfortunately for now the above therapy “as good as it gets” and all there is with a proven track record and IF you’re going to continue to insinuate that I’ve ever taken any other position, then do QUOTE ME (know you can’t…but hey, continue to put words in my mouth I NEVER said, what does that make you?).

4. Furthermore, at not time have I ever once supported any of the so-called “alternatives” to standard treatment and if you are going to continue to imply that I have with your accusations of “wooism”, again, QUOTE ME, however, I know you can’t because this no-evidence characterization is nothing more than a transparent dodge, used as a “justification” for summarily hand-waving my arguments away.

5. Here’s why forcing chemo on Cassandra was the ULTIMATE-Exercise-in-Futility:
–A. Cassandra, who was diagnosed with stage III-IV Hodgkin’s disease, was 17+, just months SHORT of the legal definition an adult under the law, 18, remembering that in the same state, at her age she could have decided to have an abortion with NO parental notification/involvement and NO “oversight” from Big Brother (state only requires counseling for those considered a “minor”, defined for this law as someone under 16).

–B. Hodgkin’s lymphoma is a cancer that can requite up to 2.5 years of repeated cycles of treatment to enable that success rate of 85-90%, with Cassandra’s advanced stage dropping that rosy prognosis down to between 65-80% as given HERE, so let’s have a description:

Unfortunately, the chemotherapy regimens for childhood leukemias and lymphomas are long for a reason. Oncologists don’t give up to two and a half years of chemotherapy because they like poisoning children. Decades ago, they learned that if they didn’t give such prolonged courses of chemotherapy, the cancer was likely to return, even if it had gone into remission after only one or two courses of intensive chemotherapy.

–C. Cassandra did NOT believe or trust her doctors’ plan for treatment, with this lack of faith/trust only being magnified by her cavalier treatment (would you trust someone who sees to it that you’re dragged from your home/forced to undergo treatment you didn’consent to?).

–D. She was FORCED to undergo traditional treatment by powerful strangers (this includes her doctors) who used a law very inconsistent on when it allows a person to make decisions regarding his/her medical care (the Legal Adult Schtick = 18 but at the same time IF one is older than 16 she can get a no-questions-asked abortion, the word “schizophrenic” comes to mind).

–E. Since she was only months away from that “magic boundary” used by total strangers to force their will upon her, the fact that she abandoned a therapy she declared made her feel “VIOLATED” and “not human” as soon as she turned 18 should come as no big surprise (of course, all those cheerleading this state-mandated treatment, just “know” her decision-making faculties “suddenly” became fully capacitated the moment all her brain-cells became properly “aged”, right, guys?).

–F. What doesn’t seem to have occurred to those I’m just going to call “The Cheerleaders” is that the very fact that she was forced to undergo treatment people I sure she viewed as “the enemy” would only solidify and harden her distrust of any claims of efficacy for that treatment, so abandoning it the first chance she got was almost assuredly a foregone conclusion (it doesn’t look like anyone actually tried to persuade her, but the likelyhood of doing that under such circumstance would make winning the lottery more probable!).

–G. Not surprisingly, Cassander was an easy mark for quacks who exploited her complete lack of trust in the medical establishment, with these predatory fleecers promising her an easy cure, noozling up her money and shamelessly using her as an advertising tool to attract more “marks” into their con game.

–H. The cancer returns with a vengeance! Big surprise?!(NOT!)

CONCLUSION
Forcing chemo on Cassandra was unwise because any probability of her continuing the treatment for the length of time required for it to be effective was doomed from the very start for the following reasons
–a) the advanced stage of her cancer,

–b) for the treatment to have real chance of working would have required state-forced chemo to continue for up to 2.5 years, but she was only in their “custody” for a few months, resulting in what I’m going to call a “maybe-remission”, with her stopping the minute the state jackboot was no longer on her neck and

–c) worst of all, now that her trust in all the “legal” adults/medical establishment who orchestrated her forcible treatment had been completely destroyed, she, not surprisingly, fled into the waiting arms of predators who dropped her like a hot potato when her cancer returned/they had taken all her money, costing her precious time in the bargain.

BOTTOM-LINE
This FAILURE was easy to predict primarily due to the FACT that as soon as Cassandra reached 18 there would be no way to enforce completion of a treatment regime that actually could require up to 2.5 years to complete, i.e., the abject stupidity of the “legal” adults here in NOT having thought this matter through and considering this obvious limitation attended with an even more obvious outcome, is simply mind-boggling IMO (if she dies, part of the blame can be layed at their door for this attempt to stampede her into treatment rather than take the time or have the patience to try to persuade her instead, i.e., actually treat her like a reasoning human being).

Lots of banter about “quackery”, that is easy from a chair in your living room but vastly more difficult to substantiate. Clearly Chemotherapy does not work with a proven 2.5% overall success rate documented by The Australian Study. You will never see statistics come out from the US cancer industry identifying survival by stage of disease. You attack Hope4Cancer on a number of fronts so lets start with coffee enema’s – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBlDTLvHi34 here Dr. Nicolas Gonzalez explains how they work. There are many videos going back for years describing the benefits of coffee enemas for everyday illness let alone cancer. Then lets dig into the battle that is waged between small business owners like the owners of Hope4Cancer and the cancer industry. The industry needs to be held as accountable, you are discussing one patient here that was treated in both the Cancun location and in Tijuana. Clearly there is a difference between the brand new clinic in Cancun and the older clinic in Playas de Tijuana.

You discuss cancer like you understand it, well lets dive in a little and see if you do. Cancer is a disease, the truth about cancer is you are battling with the body to get it back to ease. Disease to ease, kind of understandable. You cannot poison anything back to good health so why would anyone allow themselves to be bathed in chemotherapy. We as human beings are about 100 trillion cells and more than 70% water by volume, more than 99% water by molecule count. A vast majority of cancer patients are dehydrated, they lack water in their cells or the water in their cells have become increasingly toxic. The blood (mostly water) is trying to move nutrition around while it is becoming more and more viscous. The heart is beating faster to pump viscous blood around to keep the brain happy. The cancer continues to simply survive in this malaise because that is what it likes best, a viscous, acid filled environment where the cells are weak and easily invaded. So, what is the answer? Well it is not poison the system and see if the patient lives.

In my years of watching the industry here in the states and in Mexico I can say in Mexico you will be treated like a human being. Here you are greeted, and put through a system that breaks you down in nearly every way then poisoned. The practitioners in Mexico and frankly around the world are much better at battling to find homeostasis than we are here. Layering non-toxic treatments is the only long term strategy for success against cancer. Viral therapies and boosting the immune system are legitimate. Most importantly people need to remember that you do not get cancer overnight, it cannot be treated overnight save a miracle, which there are many reported.

Look at the world rankings of medical care you will find the United States way down the list for quality of care and at the top for cost of care. I am not saying if I broke my leg I would not want to be here in the states but if I had a disease I would definitely be traveling for care.

The one way to cure cancer is surgery prior to metastasis. Unfortunately the biopsy spreads the cancer then surgery spreads the cancer then treated with chemo you are using a carcinogen to treat cancer – that would be a substance that causes disease (cancer).

Surgeon is just a person that puts his pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us. Certainly there are good surgeons and there are great ones.

Chemotherapy 2% is simply truth. I have heard some remarkable new treatments like Gazyva but this is nothing like first line chemo for breast cancer.

Dr. Gonzalez left us with one of the best documented records of treating cancer patients of any doctor in the United States.

It is many diseases indeed, however they are all simply an abnormally formed cell. Sure one is a ovarian and one is a breast and so on but at the end of the day it is simply a malformed cell.

I do like your references right here in this single forum, seems very open minded.

The one way to cure cancer is surgery prior to metastasis. Unfortunately the biopsy spreads the cancer then surgery spreads the cancer then treated with chemo you are using a carcinogen to treat cancer – that would be a substance that causes disease (cancer).

This has been extensively studied. Breast cancer biopsies do not spread breast cancer.

Chemotherapy 2% is simply truth. I have heard some remarkable new treatments like Gazyva but this is nothing like first line chemo for breast cancer.

No, it is a distortion based on a single crappy study from over 15 years ago. I explained why in my link. I can provide more because I’ve described why on more than on occasion.

Dr. Gonzalez left us with one of the best documented records of treating cancer patients of any doctor in the United States.

?????

I’m sorry, that is too funny. It’s also just not true.

It is many diseases indeed, however they are all simply an abnormally formed cell. Sure one is a ovarian and one is a breast and so on but at the end of the day it is simply a malformed cell.

I am not going to argue, clearly you are part of the system that has been killing us for years. A majority of people are going to listen to you and continue to get the results we are all so familiar with.

I am just a guy that has watched and listened as people like you with PhD. and a lab, use the latest greatest treatment of the week or chemo cocktail on my family members. Causing their death in nearly unimaginable inhuman ways. I would expect you to be very proud of your education and I am hopeful that you are someone like you will not be responding to a blog post, but will find a way to treat cancer more effectively. I would say our future will deem the current methods barbaric and we will find the answer in our study of water.

Del Giudice never recovered his health and sanity after his attempts to reconstruct the Waterbox (“probably the most delicate and fragile instrument ever made by human hands”) — invented but poorly-documented by de Selby as a way of diluting water to a point where it could be handled safely. “There is more to water than meets the eye,” wrote de Selby, by way of explaining why three heavy coal-hammers were destroyed during its construction.